Here are some stories and ideas for the digital public affairs practitioner as gathered over the last seven days. Interestingly, this week provided a healthy number of “how not to” examples.
News
- Convenience stores slam Beer Store ad showing kids buying alcohol: Last week, The Beer Store launched a campaign against proposed changes to Ontario law which would allow convenience stores to sell beer. Their efforts included an ad and microsite, both of which have been ridiculed online for, among many things, the clear effort to scare the public and discredit potential challengers. This is an example of how NOT to run a campaign in the digital age.
- Facebook Just Proved It’s the Future of Mobile Advertising: Ryan Tate of Wired Magazine explains what Facebook’s quarterly earnings report (issued earlier this week) really means for online (and especially) mobile paid media.
- Why politicians and academics don’t just say what they mean: Steven Pinker’s new book, The Sense of Style, inspired this CBC piece by Neil Macdonald. Macdonald highlights political communication, clarity and bafflegab.
- Air Canada suspends workers after luggage-drop video surfaces: Air Canada took another PR hit to the chin this week, building on news reports about lost dogs and mishandled celebrities with physical disabilities. In this case, a passenger videotaped baggage handlers (who were either lazy or hampered by the structure of the service stairs at the gate) dropping gate-checked luggage six meters to a bin for loading in to an airplane.
Blogs
- England’s Care.data Fiasco: Open Government Data Done Wrong: TechPresident’s Wendy Grossman explains why the U.K. government’s National Health Service care.data open data program has failed miserably.
- Social Media Spring Cleaning: 13 Essential Chores to Stop Putting Off: Hannah Clark offered some social media spring cleaning tips on the Hootsuite blog. The list of thirteen recommendations includes changing passwords, refreshing your branding and verifying your contact information is current.
- NYPD’s Feel-Good Hashtag Campaign Backfires: It was hard to avoid news coverage and online chatter about the NYPD’s effort to earn some online love. It went badly. Horrifically badly. It was a textbook miscalculation of the online world, already discovered by the likes of McDonald’s and JPMorgan.
Video
And here’s how to attract a lot of online criticism when you really mean to attract public support.
