Mediaboss Marketing

In the wake of another celebrity social media meltdown this week, the question "where is his publicist?" has appeared from commenters in almost every article on the topic.

Let me start by stating this is not a gossip column, nor an attempt to cover content outside of social media. Twitter, as well as any other form of social media is vital for celebrities and brands. Chris Brown is not the first of either to make a public mistake online, as the photo gallery below will attest.

[More from Mashable: LLC vs. S Corp: Which Is Right for Your Startup?]

Whether you love or hate the guy, the real question here is: how do you recover from that level of damage on social media?

SEE ALSO: 6 Tips for Handling Breaking Crises on Twitter

[More from Mashable: Gnip Authorized to Sell Access to Historical Tweets [VIDEO]]

"One of the best and worst things about social media is the instantness of it. Which means it's very good and it's very dangerous," says Ronn Torossian, CEO and president of 5W Public Relations. "I think any time there's a lot of opportunity there's also a lot of risk in social media"

Torossian is a crisis communications expert who has represented and worked with celebrities such as Snoop Dog, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Nick Cannon and Pamela Anderson.

Crisis communications is a branch of public relations that deals specifically with protecting an individual or company facing a challenge to their reputation. Pros in this field are hired either before or mid-crisis.

"You can rest assured that PR firms are very involved with their client's Twitter," explains Torossian. "Sometimes they'd rather be more informed, more involved -- and other times, the celebrities won't listen."

Because Twitter is so prominent on mobile devices, Torossian says that managing celebrities has become much harder than it was before because they are now able to communicate with the public instantly.

"There is a saying in crisis communications: sometime you have a communications problem and sometimes you just have a problem. Chris Brown is a problem," says Dallas Lawrence, chief global strategist at Burson-Marsteller, where he counsels companies and organizations on effective reputation management solutions.

Celebrities are not the only ones making regrettable comments on Twitter. Large corporations have made errors, like when Entenmann's used a hashtag referring to Casey Anthony's trial verdict for marketing. We've also seen entire campaigns spiral out of control on social media, such as McDonald's or RIM.

SEE ALSO: Hashtag Marketing: 9 Ways to Avert Disaster

Although misguided tweets and negative commentary after the fact can quickly spread like wildfire on Twitter, Lawrence says that many people are often accepting when brands or personalities make a mistake.

"The public is overwhelmingly willing to forgive and understand if they see sincere contrition and a change in actions." Apologizing is table stakes. The public now wants to see what you are doing to make good on that apology."

On some occasions, celebrities have deleted or taken a hiatus from their Twitter account after regrettably lashing out on social media, such as Alec Baldwin and Ashton Kutcher. However, Torossian says in this case, if Chris Brown were to delete his account, it would be a huge mistake.

"The fundamental rule of crisis is admit what happened, tell the truth and speak up," says Torossian. "That's what he should be doing -- address it, 'I made a mistake,' now let's move on."

Ashton Kutcher

Kutcher got into hot water last month when he fired off a tweet defending Penn State coach Joe Paterno after Paterno was implicated in a scandal related to assistant coach Jerry Sandusky’s alleged history of sexually molesting children. “How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste,” the tweet said. Later on, Kutcher tweeted, “Heard Joe was fired, fully recant previous tweet!” and “Didn’t have full story. #admitwhenYoumakemistakes.” Shortly afterwards, Kutcher announced that he was turning over the management of his Twitter account to Katalyst Media, a firm he co-owns.

Click here to view this gallery.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

More:
What to Do When Your Celebrity Client Flips Out on Social Media

16-02-2012 00:07 The Jews have successfully played the role of the victim in a strategy to elicit sympathy and quiet those who would dare speak out against them.They accuse others of being Anti-Semitic while simultaneously labeling all non-Jews as Gentiles or Goyim.This strategy has been successfully employed by Zionists to perpetuate their agenda of manipulation and control.Jeff Rense interview with Texe Marrs.

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Jews Play Anti-Semitic

16-02-2012 19:06 This is for my article: A Manifesto: "The Indicator Reads, Double Zero Double Zero" Intro: The Principles of The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics Part 1

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Media Control.wmv - Video

Friday, 17 February 2012, 1:22 pm
Press Release: Environment Canterbury

February 17, 2012

MEDIA STATEMENT

Weed control boosted in Ashburton District

Environment Canterbury today announced the successful completion of two important weed control projects in the Ashburton district.

Weed control to protect Canterbury’s unique braided river bed habitats and the species that call them home has been given a boost by the Ashburton and Regional Canterbury Water Management Committee’s Immediate Steps biodiversity funding.

In 2011 the Ashburton Zone Committee supported the Rangitata Landcare Group with a $20,000 Immediate Steps grant to undertake aerial control of dense broom near Johns Streams in the Upper Rangitata.

Sally Stevens of the Rangitata Landcare group says the control in Johns Stream was a contribution to the wider control programme.

“The Immediate Steps grant allowed us to accelerate our programme and carry out this control sooner than planned,” she said. “Support from the committee has been a great boost to the ongoing partnership in the Upper Rangitata. The coordination and contributions from all parties (including runholders, councils, LINZ and DoC) allow us to make a difference.”

As part of a larger grant to the Whitcombe Landcare Group, the Ashburton committee also provided $1,100 for survey and control of false tamarisk along the upper south bank of the Rakaia River.

False tamarisk is a recent introduction to the Upper Rakaia, first noticed in 2009. Its seeds are water and wind spread, but probably first came into the area on machinery doing river protection work.

The Whitcombe Landcare Group (Upper Rakaia) was pleased to be able to undertake control work when the weed was still only in isolated patches.

Group chair Donna Field says that in the past new weeds had arrived in their area and the risk they posed was unknown, so no control had been undertaken.

“As weeds spread the cost of control grows exponentially, and often by the time it is recognised that a weed is a threat, control costs are huge and eradication is no longer possible,” she said.

“With the support of this grant we hope we can stop that happening with false tamarisk in the Upper Rakaia.”

Frances Schmechel, Environment Canterbury Senior Biodiversity Advisor, says protection of the regionally and internationally significant biodiversity of these two catchments has been supported by the Regional Water Committee, with the Regional Immediate Steps Braided River Flagship Project providing $540,000 of funding over five years.

“This funding will go towards supporting ongoing weed control in the two catchments as well as other projects such as protecting wetlands and springs, and enhancing mahinga kai sites,” she said.

Background

For several years landcare groups in the Upper Rangitata and Rakaia catchments have been leading coordinated approaches to weed control with landowners, the Department of Conservation, Land Information New Zealand and Environment Canterbury.

These projects focus on protecting the natural character of braided rivers through control of woody weeds such as gorse, broom, russell lupins and false tamarisk.

This in turn provides habitat protection for unique braided river species such as wrybill, banded dotterel and black fronted-tern, which rely on the open gravel habitat for nesting and breeding.

The Immediate Steps biodiversity programme was launched in 2010 and has $1.3 million available each year for five years to protect and restore freshwater and water use affected biodiversity.

Both the Ashburton and Regional committees are currently interested in hearing from landowners in the Upper Rakaia and Rangitata, Ashburton foothills, and the coastal area between Rangitata and Ashburton rivers, who are interested in protecting wetlands, springs or streams on their properties.

Landowners should contact Donna Woodley of Environment Canterbury, 027 225 6396, for more information.

ENDS

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Weed control boosted in Ashburton District

A new consumer electronics remote control technology gives smartphone users the fastest possible way to pair their smartphone with a media device.

Clik makes smart TVs dumb

I have seen the future of the remote control.

Actually, I've seen several futures of the remote control, from the ultimate expression of the traditional infrared remote (the Logitech Harmony products), to strong "second screen" apps (like Dijit) that use a smartphone's smarts and interface to build a better guide or remote, to the latest iPhone apps that you can download for nearly every new home entertainment product (most are awful).

One company, though, has gone off in a different direction: Clik. I think it has a new, powerful idea and a platform technology to go with it. There are several issues with it, but the high-level thinking is really interesting.

Clik is simple to use: You direct your media-playing device, say a TV or computer, to the Web address http://www.clickthis.com, which initially displays a unique QR code. Then you point your smartphone's camera, while running the Clik app, at that QR code. This quickly pairs the mobile device to the media playing product. Now you can use the app on your mobile to control what the browser is displaying on the media player.

That's the simple version, which the proof-of-concept demo, available today for iOS or Android, illustrates. With the app, you can put any YouTube video on a browser that's showing the Clik page, and control playback options.

With Clik, other users can "scan in" to take control of a screen one user is already managing.

(Credit: Clik)

It's not hard to imagine Clik offering a much more robust catalog of content: Hulu, Netflix or Amazon streams. Or videos users have saved in their Dropbox accounts. Or pictures from Flickr or Facebook.

What's technologically cool about this is that you're not relying on Wi-Fi on your mobile to stream the media. The Clik app only sends media control info, and it sends it to your browser or display by way of the Clik servers. The Clik servers then blast whatever media you have selected down to the display device. Clik assumes a broadband connection on the display, but the remote smartphone app works over any data connection. You can experience how this works more quickly than you can read it. Setup is wicked fast.

I tried the product on a few computers as well as on a Boxee Box I have connected to my television at home, since the Boxee has a browser app. It worked flawlessly. My TV itself, however, while it has a browser, does not support Flash, which Clik currently requires, so that's a strike against it.

And while cool, the current demo app is slightly irrelevant. YouTube? Who cares? Furthermore, if you really want to display a YouTube video, you go to YouTube.com or a YouTube app.

There's more here
What's exciting to me about Clik is what's beyond the demo. It's a fundamental technology, and a new way to think about remote control of entertainment devices. Clik could be used for games; it's easy to attach multiple smartphones to one game experience that unfurls on a shared TV. Clik also lets a new user quickly take control of a media device if he or she is in the room (in the demo app, you can see this: you press a button to have the display pop up another QR code so a new user can "scan in" to take control of the screen). For shared displays (conference rooms, lecture halls), it's also a powerful idea.

Clik beats any competing technology for connecting, or pairing, a remote with a device. And since it appears that we're moving to using our smartphones or tablets as remotes, this represents a big opportunity.

Clik is also able to put the content selection function and the "smarts" of smart TV into the cloud. A big part of the technology is its focus on speed and responsiveness. Using the YouTube demo, you can control playback and volume with barely perceptible lag, even when you're using cellular instead of Wi-Fi on your phone. There's no reason to use a plasticky, button-strewn remote designed by eight-fingered aliens if you can replace it with a content-aware, Web-connected, personal smart device that's always with you. People are watching TVs with smartphones in hand anyway; this technology closes the loop. (If you don't want to use a smartphone for a remote, a cheap Android tablet could also do the job.)

However, I'm not so keen on the business, due to some major challenges and competitors.

Other companies (like Flingo) are building platform technologies to meld the mobile screen with the TV experience. I believe I may already have Flingo remote technology in my new LG TV, in fact, as one of the set's three redundant user interfaces. Which indicates one of the big problems for the electronics companies: they really don't get interfaces. Give them something great like Clik, and I bet they'd screw it up.

The cool little Tubemote app (review) also allows a pretty quick way to push video plays to any browser from a smartphone. It's been around awhile and is actually a very good app for anyone who has a large screen in their entertainment system that can run a browser. Clik has a much faster setup, but Tubemote currently does more.

And then there's Airplay. If you've got an Apple TV box and an iPhone or iPad, you're already golden. You can push content--video, music, pictures--to your big screen from your mobile device or from your network. It's pretty slick.

Based on what I've seen so far, Clik is not about to become a direct consumer product, although CEO Ted Livingston (also of Kik) as well as one of his VCs, Fred Wilson, told me that the goal here is in fact to build a consumer company. Livingston plans to target the college market first: every student has a computer, and for lazily controlling the MacBook on the desk while you're sprawled on the couch, this is a very workable solution. Doesn't seem like a fundamental product, but it's a nice thing.

Clik could be more important, a more open platform than its competitors: a real contender in the electronics and apps industry, if only the electronics companies would embrace it. Which is a bad bet. The content-pushing service will also need to do deals with the companies running the content-streaming services, which is another maze to navigate. On the one hand you have companies eager to put the streaming content everywhere (like Netflix), but with content that's already everywhere, how can you sell the consumer yet another way to access it, even if it's free? And on the other, you have products that people want, but that are so tightly controlled due to license restrictions that they're unlikely to show up on something like Clik at all. Hulu, for one.

Clik could make things somewhat easier for consumers, and for the college students when they go home, by making its own cheap set-top box, running just a browser that the Clik app controls. But then it'd be selling against the $50 Roku LT that everybody seems to love, not to mention Apple TV, and again Boxee.

Somewhere in that maze of electronics companies, over-lawyered rights owners, and confused consumers, there's a nice hunk of cheese. I really like what Clik is doing, but I'm not sure Clik will find that cheese.

See the rest here:
Clik: The future of remotes, in an alternate reality