Inside the world of Rob Mclean, Author

I don't know if he was drunk or what, but Rick Perry was sure in a different state of mine when he gave this speech recently... People are saying this is his Howard Dean moment that will officially end his campaign. What I find interesting about this video is that usually Perry gets tongue tied when he talks and ends up making no sense. Yet throughout this speech, despite the fact that it's totally out of character compared to how he's presented himself in the campaign, he doesn't get tongue tied one time. I think it's because he's not really thinking, he's just being himself. I talk about in PR how important it is to be yourself, to play off your natural personality because presenting a false image of yourself is very hard to do and still remain aware of what's coming out of your mouth. Now, being intoxicated (not saying Perry was for sure) isn't the path to go down though. While this little blunder may cost Perry the race (but real...

If you haven't seen, you can now rent movies on YouTube . I was impressed at the price, the selection (they have movies like Scream 4 and the like) and that YouTube prices things in your currency (so for me in Canadian dollars). Not to mention there's lots of free movies as well. RIP NetFlix. And for all the cable companies, it was fun while it lasted.

Obama recently announced that all the troops would be leaving Iraq by year end. Now, technically he is telling the truth. Yet, as the New York Times reports -  U.S. Planning Troop Buildup in Gulf After Exit From Iraq - it's obvious that exiting Iraq does not necessarily mean lower military presence in the region.  In fact, the article seems to suggest that the next 'phase' of all these wars is to create a Nato-like, Middle East security council in the region Regardless of the Nato-plan, moving troops to the border of Iraq via Kuwait is as close as you can get to staying in Iraq without actually doing so. Let's call it what it is, the moment any type of fighting breaks out in Iraq, the USA will remobilize its troops back in to Iraq. It's this kind of 'truth telling' that gives PR a bad name and for why public confidence / trust in government is so low. Obama knows that the public will interpret his statements as meaning 'The Iraq war is over...

A US law enforcement agency asked Google to take down videos showing police brutality, according to the Huffington Post. Google's response? Sorry but no. This is why Google rocks. Now mind you, apparently the US government has requested Google remove 757 videos in 2011 and Google did removed 63 per cent of them. Although it appears they did so in accordance with defamation laws, which sounds reasonable to me (Google can't be asked to break law on behalf of its users after all). Whether it's favouring freedom of speech, or I guess in this case, freedom of video, or its standing up to China , I'm always impressed by how Google seems to make its choices in favour of freedom and the every day man (even if that means banging heads with the powers that be - from law enforcement to the Chinese government). I don't know if it's a great day or a sad day when Google becomes more essential to democracy, freedom and transparency than the US government itself.

Way back during the BP oil spill crisis I wrote a short blog entry called - That's a Wrap - and in it I made the point that the process of 'mocking' is one that has a tremendously powerful affect on a brand.  When the public begins to mock you, that is their way of robbing you of all power and authority your brand may carry. The whole point of mocking is to redefine the characteristics associated with your brand, to associate everything you say and do with being 'laughable'. You essentially lose the ability to communicate, because no matter what you say it is twisted to look absurd so that no one takes it seriously. Mocking is also different than being provocative (I'll show the difference below in a second). Over in Greece, things have now entered the mocking stage. As the Chicago Sun reports -  Nazi jokes, wrath at Germans highlight Greek despai r. It may be hard to believe, given Germany is leading the charge to save Greece via the EFSF, but those in ...

For those that think free markets can't work, Chase Bank shows that they can. While Bank of America started charging customers $5 a month for debit card usage, Chase Bank has chosen not to implement debit card fees . Chase had been charging its customers $3 month in Georgia, but has decided to remove said fees and to not implement them anywhere else. When free markets actually work - which is to say no one is given preferential treatment by the government that allows them to engage in unfair practices (wink wink, CRTC, cough cough, Bell) against consumers or which assist them in monopolizing a market - then the balance of consumer demand and production/service costs dictate prices. Anyway, kudos to Chase on the PR front for recognizing that while milking customers $3 a day may enhance the bottom line a little bit, it doesn't offset the brand damage they suffer over the long run. And kudos to the American people who apparently have been closing accounts with major banks an...

Apparently Madoff and his wife attempted suicide shortly after his Ponzi scheme was discovered.  From what I can tell there's no proof of this other than Ruth Madoff's word given the couple said they took sleeping pills but then woke up in the morning (so I'm assuming there's no hospital records of any attempt). I don't know, to me this smells like PR spin. A desperate attempt to reframe the story of Madoff as being not such a bad guy. After all, if he felt so guilty as to attempt suicide, could he really be that bad? When the abuser tries to reframe themselves as one of the victims, your 'bullshit' radar has to go off and you have to really be suspicious of the messages being put forth. Madoff was a criminal that stole other people's money and destroyed lives - he's as far from a victim as you can get.  He was a bad bad guy. His actions ultimately contributed to, or at least one has to assume they did, to his son committing suicide. The vid...

Kudos to Harper for appointing an Auditor General and saying to hell with the bilingual requirement -  Opposition cries foul over Harper’s unilingual Auditor-General pick . It's this kind of thing that gives socialism a bad name, the opposition to the appointment that is. Let's not pick the best candidate because only someone who is bilingual should be picked, not because French is actually needed for the job, but rather because 'dem's the rules' . I tell you, this act alone will get the conservatives my vote moving forward (and I didn't vote conservative in the last election because I felt they really dropped the ball on usage-based billing and allowed a corrupt CRTC to almost screw over the whole nation when it came to Internet billing). I've always felt the bilingual requirements within the federal government discouraged merit-based hiring (actually, here in Ottawa everyone knows that to be the case, merit is a far second in considerations to biling...

Occupy Wall Street, whether you agree or disagree with them, is a PR war. It's a battle to frame the narrative of what is happening to society (which is far more complex that anyone really understands, although people have their own understanding of things based on the experiences they are living and politic views they may hold). On the OWS side you've got a protest against greed, corruption and poverty and on the other side you've got a belief in order, maintaining the status quo and structuring society based on a competitive / meritocracy model of reward (those who work hard and are smarter than others, reap more rewards, and in turn, hypothetically, create a better world to live in for all of us). Now, putting aside the corruption element (which everyone should be on the same side about), you've got a classic socialism versus capitalism / free market debate. And up until now the public has been pretty split on OWS. About 20 per cent strongly support, 20 per cen...

I've always liked Bernie Sanders, I see him as the left wing equivalent of Ron Paul. Passionate and honest, and whether you agree with him or not, I always respect people who don't have a hidden agenda and who are working for the benefit of others. I happen to agree with a lot of what Sanders says, although I tend to differ in the sense that I don't think being 'rich' is the problem per se, but rather corruption and illegal behaviors that go uncontested (by politicians, rating agencies, banks, and some corporations) are the problem. Corruption (and lack of accountability and morality) in general is always the problem, not just by the one per cent but by everyone in society. The more corruption there is, the less the rules then matter to people, which then breeds further corruption, and so the more lemmings rush towards the cliff. This recent speech by Sanders is worth watching if you want a preview of things to come. Sanders lays it down and calls a spade a sp...

So Netflix got demolished today, down 34 per cent . Over the past six months the stock is down almost 70 per cent. I've written a couple posts in the past on Netflix: NetFlix backtracks, but did they do enough? Who is Dumber? Bank of America, NetFlix or Bell Canada? Where Netflix messed up (what happens when you ignore PR) As you can tell from the titles of my blog entries, it's no surprise that I'm not surprised by the spectacular unravelling of Netflix over the past year. If you are interested in Netflix I'd suggesting reading a great article that overviews what is going wrong with the company -  Why The Netflix Death Spiral Is Imminent . Netflix has made the biggest mistake a start-up can make - assuming that bigger is better. In a 'content is king' world, they've made the assumption that it's worth paying one-billion dollars to stream television shows from the CW network. They also are paying 30-million per movie to stream Dreamworks mov...

I have to believe this is some kind of joke, yet apparently it's not, it's an actual campaign video for Herman Cain. The video is of Mark Block, Herman's chief of staff and campaign manager, telling folks why Herman Cain is what America needs, and then at the end of the video, he smokes a cigarette. Wow, just wow. Nothing against smoking, but why would you put it in your video?! This might be the only campaign video ever, in the past 20 years, where someone is smoking a cigarette. I mean, did Herman cut a deal with the tobacco lobby in exchange for donations or what? Because if not, this is just stupidity at its finest.

Over at Zerohedge there was a post today that made me chuckle with regards to what they are doing over in Europe to 'solve' the debt crisis. For those not following, EFSF stands for European Financial Stability facility. The mandate of the EFSF is: - Provide loans to countries in financial difficulties - Intervene in the debt primary and secondary markets. Intervention in the secondary market will be only on the basis of an ECB analysis recognising the existence of exceptional financial market circumstances and risks to financial stability - Act on the basis of a precautionary programme - Finance recapitalisations of financial institutions through loans to governments Basically the EFSF is the 'facility' through which they will save Europe. Anyway, on to the post. .. ----------------------- Remember: when in doubt, baffle with bullshit. From Dow Jones: EU Paper Confirms Looking At 2 EFSF Options, May Combine Them -Senior EU Source EU Paper Says E...

So WikiLeaks has come out and said that it has temporarily shut down operations as a result of the banking blockade that has dried up 95 per cent of its funds. This makes absolutely no sense to me in the least. A whole bunch of variables don't make sense here: Why can't WikiLeaks simply create a shell corporations that people can contribute to and then simply move the money from that shell corporation over to WikiLeaks?  Assange is saying that WikiLeaks needs the public's support, yet does not tell people what they can do (essentially making an empty statement that will leave viewers scratching their head as to what they can do to help) WikiLeaks never released its supposed banking documents that were going to 'shock' the world and expose banking behaviors during the 2008 economic meltdown.  The blockade has been through   Bank of America, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Western Union - ok fine, use other options, or a different bank, or let people send in...

For those fascinated by what it must have been like back in 2008 when the markets crashed you'll want to go see Margin Call. Great acting and a good look at what it must have been like when everyone realized the emperor had no clothes. The last few minutes of the movie with Jeremy Irons is a seminal scene that captures perfectly the world we are living in (don't worry, clip below doesn't give it away, it's just a trailer).

I recently came across a great list of PR folks who are on Twitter. I've got to say, I was sort of shocked at some of their Twitter accounts. Their tweets had nothing to do with PR. For some of them it was simply an endless string of where they ate, what their fastest run time was, etc. I mean, your Twitter account is yours to do with as you please, but if you are going to make it business related then the Twitter stream should at least resemble a business line of thought versus that of a bored 16 year old. Also of note, when going through a Twitter list such as the one listed above, you really only have time to look at the five most recent tweets in determining if you want to follow someone. Therefore, if you've got 10 tweets talking about how your dog is so cute, that's all anyone is going to see upon first look (and it's probably what they will use to decide whether they want to follow you). I will say though, there were some gems in that list. Folks tweetin...

I'm always hesitant to view anyone as standing head and shoulders above the rest of the human race. There are a couple of people in history who probably fit that category - Albert Einstein, Marcus Aurelius, Mahatma Gandhi - that's about all I can think of. There are lots of people who accomplish amazing things, but that doesn't mean they aren't like everyone else, they often are! The bits and pieces that have come out about Steve Jobs the past week, including the fact that he refused surgery that could have potentially saved his life and instead went with 'herbs and vegetables', shows that Jobs wasn't some super human whose frontal cortex was from the year 3055. He was a genius, he built the most successful tech company in the world, yet, it appears, that he was fundamentally the same as everyone else in that he was prone to the same internal struggle that most people face, balancing critical thinking versus emotive thinking. Apple changed the wo...

I left Rogers over a year ago and I'm glad I did because recent testing shows they are the worst Internet throttler in Canada, by far! Quote below from the article linked to above: -------- Here are the most recent results for Canadian ISPs and the percentage of connections they throttled in the first quarter of 2010: Shaw: 14% Bell: 16% Rogers: 78% Telus: 6% Videotron: 3% Bell Aliant: 6% Cogeco: 46% Sasktel: 5% MTS: 6% ------- Are you joking me? Rogers throttled 78 per cent of their connections? Just pathetic. I don't see how this is any different than the r ecent Groupon scandal where 'discounted' prices were really prices based on inflated prices. Sure we'll give you 50 per cent off something that we've marked up 50 per cent. Anyway, Rogers advertises certain speeds but clearly you better not expect to get those speeds. You might get them at two-o'clock in the morning, but otherwise forget it.  I don't know if Roger's thought it would ne...

It seems to have happened in only the past couple months or less, but online video advertisements are now everywhere. CNBC, MSNBC, NBC, YouTube, you name it and they have ads before every video. If you even refresh the video you will have to watch the front-end ad all over again. This is a recent phenomena. While video ads have been around for a while, they've been used sparingly or not at all (case in point, Bloomberg still offers free live streaming of its live broadcast and has not inserted video ads... yet). Bloomberg aside though, short video ads are in front of every single video clip out there. It's shocking how pervasive this has become in just the past few months. I tried to find some info on what could be causing this sudden adoption (or implementation if you will) of online advertising, but failed to come up with any significant info. Of all the outlets out there, YouTube does the best job with their ads, allowing viewers to skip the ads and go directly to the ...

Looks like austerity isn't going over so well in Greece today... you have to feel bad for the cops, they are definitely earning their pay today.

So Ron Paul put forward his economic plan today. Should be interesting to see how people respond to it. Basically, the plan slashes the living hell out of the government and ends all the wars. Personally I like it, but then again I don't believe that the world will fall apart if you don't have government controlling everything, printing money endlessly, picking winners and losers through subsidies and fighting half the world in a 'war on terror'. What's interesting about this though on the PR front is that Paul is getting wise when it comes to PR messaging. The criticism always laid against him is that he's 'radical'. In his interview on CNN he turns that around and frames them (those who oppose him) as radical, and it's their radicalness that has lead to massive debts, endless wars and the people rising up such as with the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street. It's hard to propose 'cuts' during a recession, but the reality is that ...

Apparently   Fauja Singh (aka   the Turbaned Tornado) , who is 100 years old, just ran a marathon in Toronto ( that's 42 kilometers). It took him nine hours.  That's insane.  Most 20, 30, 40, or 50 year-olds can't run a marathon (I've never tried, but I doubt I could). Anyway, just goes to show that the potential of the human body and mind are far greater than we generally think them to be.  So for all you PR folks out there, suggest to your CEO that to promote the company they should run a marathon. When they decline tell them that if a 100 year old man can do it, surely they can. 

Not sure on the numbers, I've heard 30,000 and others say 10,000, but in   la Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Spain, this is what you call a protest. Considering Madrid has a population of only 3.3 million, this is one heck of a crowd. By comparison, NYC has a population of just over eight million (not including Brooklyn, Manhattan, etc.), kick it up to say 11 million with surrounding areas. It's 18-19 million if you count the whole state. Makes you wonder what NYC would look like if you had the same ratio of protesters to population density as in Madrid. You'd be looking at 20,000 to 60,000, maybe even 90,000 people.  Anyway, just blows your mind to see so many people in the streets. Apparently Montreal actually had a decent showing as OWS protested outside the Bank of Montreal. Vancouver seemed kind of small given the population size. It's funny to see the difference between Montreal and Vancouver (folks seem a bit more energetic in Montreal). Toronto s...

Bloomberg reports that RIM is offering its customers free premium apps (worth up to $100) as a way of saying sorry for the outages they experienced. RIM is also considering compensation to Service Providers as well, although details are unknown at this time. Next Media Animation  (an Asian animation studio) did an animated video regarding the outages, which includes wall street bankers jumping out windows, Android attacking RIM towers and Steve Jobs (with a Halo over his head) racking up sales. Another funny video is some guy impersonating the 'Leave Britney Alone' viral video, but this time it's Leave RIM Alone. On the PR front, good on RIM for how it's handling this crisis. Yes, damage to the brand has occurred, but you have to move on and handle the situation regardless. The apology, free apps for customers and potential reimbursement to service providers show that RIM cares. That's all customers really want to know at the end of the day... that th...

Looks like the Occupy Wall Street protest is heating up. It's interesting to see that Canada had its OWS protests today (Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal).  Pretty much no video was uploaded to YouTube yet and from what I can gather, the crowds were pretty small. Not sure why the OWS was so small in Canada, perhaps because our country isn't screwed like everywhere else in the world. At least to the extent that we have universal health, social safety nets of various sorts, our housing bubble has popped (yet) and our banks didn't commit financial suicide back in 2008. So that level of social anger just isn't as prevalent in Canada, but that's not to say it won't be in time (we've got serious unemployment issues and under employed graduates just like everywhere else). Anyway, I'd hate to be a politician in Italy, the UK or the US as it seems this OWS protests just keeps ramping up instead of fading away. Riots in Italy London Joins In (...

I've been using Mozilla's Firefox browser now for at least six years (if not more), but today I went and downloaded Google Chrome. Stupid Firefox has been crashing endlessly. In order to use the stupid thing you basically have to have your task manager open (Alt+Crtl+del) endlessly to manually shut the thing down because it just freezes up.   This all started happening on release 7.0 (which was the final release after a flurry of releases that was having me upgrade my browser ever few days for a week - very annoying).  Speculation says the crashes are due to some McAfee plug-in , but I don't buy it. First I don't have McAfee on my system, second I never downloaded a McAfee plug-in and third I'm pretty sure it's due to a flash plug-in, because the browser mostly crashes when encountering flash.  Stats are showing that Google Chrome is catching up to Firefox and I can definitely see why. Right now I don't enjoy the Chrome interface as much, but it doesn...

A couple nights ago I watched the GOP debate on Bloomberg and I was really impressed with a series of ads that ran during the commercial breaks. From what I can tell the Peterson Foundation is a non-partisan organization. Their mission statement reads: Our mission is to increase public awareness of the nature and urgency of key fiscal challenges threatening America's future and to accelerate action on them. To address these challenges successfully, we work to bring Americans together to find and implement sensible, long-term solutions that transcend age, party lines and ideological divides in order to achieve real results. While I'm usually against kids being used in advertisements, the Peterson Foundation actually did a good job and it worked well. Now if only the rest of America could adopt an attitude as sensible as these ads.

As everyone knows Blackberry service around the world has been disrupted for the past few days. I'm sure it's the last thing RIM needed right now, but I've got to say they did the right thing apologizing to their customers. And they didn't apologize through a news release, or letter, or tweet, rather they used video. While their customers are probably still furious, this act of humility will minimize the damage they suffer long term from the outage. Moreover, it actually puts a human face on RIM, something that has been missing for a long long time. I'm really impressed with Lazaridis in this apology. He comes across as sincere and humble. When you consider that he's a multi-billionaire and his company has been getting attacked endlessly for the past few years, he could have simpy issued a press release or had executive management comment to the media. Most CEO's would not do what Lazaridis did. He stepped up and put his face on this mess.  He came t...

Cool infographic I came upon over at infographics that outlines the demographics of social networking users in the UK (click on the image to enlarge, if any issues, view the full sized image here )

So NetFlix has cancelled the spin-off of their mail-DVD service, which was to be called Qwikster. The move appears to be in response to customer churn. The various stories on this development don't articulate whether NetFlix will continue with the price increase they did back in July. I assume this will be the case. So really, the only thing that changes here seems to be that instead of having to sign up to two different services - NetFlix for streaming and Qwikster for DVDs - customers will get both services through NetFlix (for something like 16 bucks a month, which was the price hike over the original 10 bucks a month). I just don't get NetFLix, they clearly know that they have ticked off customers because customers are clearly leaving the service in droves. Given the size of this PR disastser, if they were smart they'd turn back their business model 12 months. Revert back to a subscriber growth model versus a revenue growth model. Get people back to the servic...

So Rick Perry has basically fallen off the map in the polls. His run for the GOP nomination is all but dead at this point. In a move of desperation he's launched a pretty aggressive ad against Romney. Personally I love this because maybe if all the republican nominees attack each other like children like this, Ron Paul may actually have a shot at the nomination. That said, I think Perry accomplishes very little with this. Yes, he may very well knock Romney down in the polls, but I don't think it will raise Perry up. Which is kind of childish when you think about it - it's a "If I can't win then neither can you" attitude and it actually reflects everything that is currently wrong in Washington. However, some would argue, and rightly so, that the more a nominee is attacked the better they'll be able to withstand the attacks during the general election. With regards to the ad itself, overall I found it ineffective, but I will say the one moment wh...

The Occupy Wall Street crowd are now organizing a  "NYC billionaires Walking Tour" , where people can walk through the neighbourhoods of the "one per cent" and see how the "one per cent live". I know I'm being a bit melodramatic here, but this is the kind of thing that while innocent on the surface, is kind of scary when you think about it. Up here in Canada I can't imagine this kind of thing happening, simply because no one would support an angry mob (who have been peaceful so far mind you) walking through a specific neighbourhood and potentially scaring the people who live there. What's the point of walking through said neighbourhoods? To let the one per cent know that you are upset with them? They already know this. To see how they live? Everyone already knows how they live. The real reason can only be three fold: 1) To garner increased media attention (and this is a good strategy in that regard) 2) To try and scare the one per cent...

I thought Bank of America's five-dollar debit card fee was a horrible PR move and spoke about it in two posts - Bank of America Headlines: Let the PR Crisis Begin and Who is Dumber? Bank of America, NetFlix or Bell Canada? The Los Angeles times ran an article on this topic and it looks like BoA's fee is moving from bad headlines to negative customer reaction. Some interesting quotes from the article: In Los Angeles, police arrested 11 protesters who marched into a BofA branch Thursday and refused to leave after trying to cash a giant check for $673 billion made out to the "People of California." Protesters continued their efforts Friday with a march through downtown L.A. ------ "This frankly is just an incredible marketing and PR debacle," said Bert Ely, an independent banking analyst. "They roll this thing out with no testing, make it nationwide, it's higher than anybody else. What kind of reaction do they expect?" In addi...