Obama's Real Problem on the Race Issue

This past weekend I was down in Florida for a family-related matter. At a relative's house in an upscale retirement community near West Palm Beach, I found myself in a conversation with one of their neighbors. He was white, Jewish and I'd guess around 70 years old. I asked him how long he'd lived in Florida and he mentioned it had been roughly 22 years. It was the next part of the conversation that opened my eyes a little wider on the challenge Obama faces in the general election:

Neighbor: We were living for a number of years in another Florida community, but then the blacks moved in and (guffaw), we moved out. I'm not racist mind you, but I just didn't grow up around blacks and so when they came to town my wife and I decided it was time to leave.

Me: (forced polite smile)

Neighbor: But don't worry, I'm not racist. Now I'm not voting for that Obama character. Heck no. But I'm not racist.

Ok. Thanks for making it clear you aren't racist. It was on the heels of this conversation that I realized the true electoral challenge for Obama this November is not the self-acknowledged racists who are just not ready to vote for an African American and very well may never vote for a minority. This category of voters for whom racism is deeply ingrained and as much a part of their lives as work and religion, probably have not voted Democrat in some time and won't eat much into the Democrat base simply because Obama is on the ticket.

But it is another class of voters represented by the man I met lurking as the true unknown element of this election. Voters who believe themselves to be open-minded on such issues; voters who do not actively rant against minorities with your typical unfounded racist talking points. They are the self-delusional voters. The ones who try and convince themselves that:

a) if they choose not to vote for Obama it will be because of some policy position and not the color of his skin
b) they could possibly consider voting for Obama, but when the curtain closes the reality of their conscience hits them

The neighbor was not an exaggerated or stereotyped version of a racist. But he represents a bloc of voters that simply cannot be calculated. A single-issue voting bloc that will vote against Obama for one reason and one reason only.

Posted by Brian Lustig at 9:21 AM 0 comments

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Anatomy of a Facebook "Frenemy"

For business acquaintances, friends and family who utilize Facebook, it is clear that the litmus test for establishing a Facebook friendship is far more lax than how we would define conventional friendships. For that reason, it is clear that on Facebook there are friends, enemies, and frenemies.

Frenemy: I've witnessed a close friend that I've known since 3rd grade Facebook befriend dozens of people we knew from middle school and high school. Most are harmless, but some were guys that were, frankly, jerks that my friend knows I didn't like at all. Now today I'm sure they are fine, upstanding citizens, but I'm not going to simply forget history and in some ways consider it a slap in the face that my friend has aligned with these people. So in real life this guy is still my friend, but perhaps for now he is my frenemy for aligning with my known former enemies.

Enemy: On the business side, I recently received a Facebook friend invite from someone who, no joke, tried to steal a client away from me. "Hey, I know that I tried to take your client, but I hope we can still be Facebook friends?" I don't even know this person or ever met him in person, but yet, somehow, he's decided that we should be Facebook friends. Pass.

Friend: The Facebook friend can take many forms - family member, close friend, long lost friend, like minded niche group friend, business friend that serves a professional purpose, etc. Bottom line is that volume counts, and the more friends you can acquire the more relevant you are in the Facebook sphere of influence.

Posted by Brian Lustig at 7:00 AM 0 comments

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Averting Future Housing Crises

Many factors have contributed to the current housing predicament, not least among them homeowners who overextended and bit off more mortgage than they can chew. Part of this was facilitated by easy borrowing and dubious lending schemes, but in my opinion there is another discussion point that is being completely ignored: the value of the mortgage affordability calculator.

While the calculator comes in a few different forms, it is fairly universal in asking the homeowner to plug in debt & income obligations, as well as loan assumptions, to generate an estimate of how much house the homeowner can afford. The calculator itself is well-intended, but let's be honest: most homeowners clearly who bothered to use it displayed selective memory to justify whatever house they ultimately wanted. Skip a loan obligation here, short another one there and soon enough any house seems affordable.

To me, a far more effective - though at this point impossible - tool would be for homeowners to view what household income and equity are for prospective neighbors and the prior owner. The neighbor makes $400,000 a year?! My god, there is no way I should even be looking at that house! Now of course the system only works once the imbalances are flushed out of the market, but a more effective shock to the system I cannot imagine.

What had me thinking about this was a story today in the San Francisco Chronicle that shows how the Web is blowing the cover off of previously unavailable salaries. The distressing news (and paradox) is that, for cities with high costs of living, $200,000 in annual income is middle class -- yet somehow no one is making that much money. What does seem apparent from the story however is that many of the people you interact with every day - county employees, teachers, policemen, the head of your kid's city soccer league - are pulling well above six figures in certain markets.

These are all noble, respected professions of course, and that may in fact be the point behind a reclassification of middle class. These professions have historically been considered middle class jobs, so even if the salaries push $200,000 they are still categorized as such. As middle class becomes harder to define, so does the middle class house. Is it a $500,000 property? $650,000? More?

I'm not arguing that personal income information should be widely available on the Web - or anywhere else for that matter except for matters of corporate stakeholder and government accountability. But, to the extent this information can be made available in generic fashion to help homeowners make more informed buying decisions, I do see value.

Posted by Brian Lustig at 10:30 AM 0 comments

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What Vocus is and what it isn't

Every so often chatter abounds about robotic cyborgs that will one day possess the intelligence to replace manufacturing line workers and eradicate entire professions. I've always hoped that if a cyborg is built to replace me that he will be taller and more handsome so that at least I could be comforted that I was beat by the best.

Long story short, I'm all for disruptive technologies. And if one comes along that serves as a more efficient and cost-effective alternative to the PR professional I'll tip my proverbial hat and find another vocation. But there is an inherently personal aspect of effective public relations that will make it very difficult for such a product to bust on the scene anytime soon. And I can tell you one product that is definitely not a viable replacement for, well, me - Vocus.

First off, let me say that Vocus is a lovely product as a supplement to, not a replacement for, a strategic public relations program. For the uninformed, Vocus is a media database program that allows PR professionals and organizations to look up media contacts by geography, beat, outlet, etc. One could, if they desire, blast out releases and news en masse, though those worth their salt know that 99% of the time this approach does more harm than good.

I bring this issue up after attending a DC-area entrepreneurial event featuring panel discussions for entrepreneurs to gain insight on various business issues, ranging from raising capital to sales and marketing. The event itself was great, but I was horrified to hear one of the Sales & Marketing session panelists recommend to entrepreneurs in the audience that they use Vocus instead of a strategic PR program.

This was suicidal and reckless advice - especially for a start-up. When you are a company with zero name recognition or credibility you really have one shot to make yourself memorable to a reporter, editor or blogger. If you don't enter the conversation knowing what they have been writing about, what messages they need to hear, what competitors they will ask about and how to frame the story the opportunity will be over before it begins.

Vocus is a great tool but not without its imperfections. In some ways it is akin to Google - it can narrow the search field but still leaves you with a high number of generic results. It is up to the PR professional to lock in on that one contact best suited to reach out to, in addition to all of the messaging and support around each media opportunity.

Second, Vocus is still a tool for conventional public relations. As most entrepreneurs know, PR is increasingly operating in an unconventional environment through online viral campaigns, targeted interaction with customers and social networks. In other words, PR is requiring a more intimate - rather than impersonal approach.

I'll give this panelist the benefit of the doubt that she was trying to "help" the entrepreneurs, but in effect all she was doing was inviting entrepreneurs to engage in a highly non-strategic PR path, one that would involve a dangerous game of Russian roulette with the media that would still end up costing five figures a year just to use the service.

Vocus is a great tool for PR professionals, but it is not a suitable replacement for start-ups - nor is it meant to be one. Take that, tall and handsome Cyborg replacement.

Posted by Brian Lustig at 5:58 PM 0 comments

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PR professionals and media should take lesson from Jackie Moon

If anyone in the PR industry or editorial world has seen Will Ferrell's comedy (I use that term loosely) Semi-Pro, they certainly aren't heeding the catch phrase of Ferrell's character Jackie Moon -- Everybody Love Everybody.

These days, there has been no love lost between PR professionals, bloggers and offline media. Latest example: a spat playing out on TechCrunch, one of the most influential tech weblogs around that is required reading for anyone who touches the "new" Internet space. TechCrunch founder and co-editor Michael Arrington has certainly helped to "make" more than a few new Internet companies, but he recently decided to "break" an intern who did little more than simply try and cross her legal t's in re-using TechCrunch content.

Fellow industry blogger Steve Lubetkin gets it exactly right - regardless of how well the intern might have parsed words, her intent was absolutely legitimate and reasonable. Now, full disclosure: I used to work for the company from which the intern hails, but this episode is just the latest in a larger and disturbing pattern of deteriorating relations between media and PR.

Ironically, I penned an op-ed that appears in the current issue of PR Week (subscription required) that hits on the underlying issues of this very incident. Track all of the online coverage surrounding the TechCrunch dust up and it leaves one to wonder if both sides spent even a fraction of the time seeking out ways to improve the communications process how much better off everyone would be. And that was the point of the op-ed; you take this incident and the building frustration that caused Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson to post a public blacklist of email addresses he felt was sending him spam pitches and it becomes crystal clear that the process is broken.

What we can all sense in the tone of both Anderson and now Arrington is frustration. And my guess is that in the case of Arrington the innocent PR person whom he went off on simply bore the brunt of frustration that had been building for some time over more egregious queries. What concerns me is that both sides seem to retreat into finger-pointing mode when these incidents pop up. Rather than spend time trying to identify ways to make the process work better, it becomes a poisonous back and forth that serves no one's interests. The PR Agency that sits on the sidelines watching a competitor take the heat will likely at some point feel the burn as well.

The reality is that the online and offline press need PR professionals, and we need them. The sooner that industry and media influencers start championing real solutions, the sooner incidents like these will be a thing of the past.

Posted by Brian Lustig at 7:12 PM 0 comments

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Is Rockville Town Center a Ghost Town Waiting to Happen?

The Federal Reserve certainly has its share of critics these days for its handling of the financial levers and mortgage mess. But, for all of that, you must allow it has taken an activist posture (i.e. - Bear Stearns rescue, etc.) in trying to prevent a cratering situation from getting even worse.

I'm not going to argue the merits or wisdom of the Fed's approach, but rather implore Rockville city officials who have spearheaded the $400 million Town Square development to take a look at what is happening around them and rethink where the current path is headed.

For those of us who live near the Town Center and have been eagerly waiting its completion for years, the results thus far are distressing. Delays are inevitable: the Gold's Gym opened more than a year after initial estimates and the long-awaited grocery store that could serve as a critical anchor for the project is supposedly not going to open until 2009. But more unsettling is the increasingly formidable hurdles erected for the local businesses (and patrons).

Much of the issue centers around two problems: 1) the incredibly costly parking garages that the City is now trying to recoup its investment on and 2) the mismanagement of the infrastructure building process(sidewalks, etc.) that has forced the city to repeatedly shut down areas in front of storefronts (and now the garages) because the initial work has been deemed insufficient.

Let's start with the parking: Yes, the City is on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars for these new garages and cannot keep them free of charge indefinitely. But, now that they have installed these fancy parking machines and are charging $1 an hour 7am-7pm Monday through Friday, businesses - right when they were starting to see traction among clientele - face a backlash and loss of business. I work out at the Gold's Gym nearly every morning. Now, because I must pay $1 for the hour I am there every day, parking costs me almost as much as the monthly membership itself. This means that I will likely soon go back to working out in North Bethesda, which in turn means I will not be stopping into the Town Center Starbucks a couple mornings a week and the cycle of lost business extends well beyond the $1 per day the parking nets the City.

And this is where the City needs to take a page from the Fed and, in effect, put a rescue bailout together for the local businesses before too many patrons decide to flee due to the parking and never-ending construction cycle. Shorten the period where a fee is collected or conceive some stop-gap measure that won't turn Town Center into a ghost town before it has a chance to solidify some loyal traffic. Without the grocery store there are few anchors that keep patrons coming back on a regular basis. How often is a resident going to go to a boutique clothing store? Twice a month maybe?

The other factor working here, admittedly out of the City's control, is the cratering real estate market which has kept Town Center condos vacant and thus greatly reduced traffic to local businesses and restaurants. The weekends, unsurprisingly, are relatively packed in the Town Center given parking is free. But it is clear that the businesses will not be able to survive the interminable construction and loss of business due to weekly parking unless action is taken.

The City may be inclined to ride it out and stick to its guns on parking and other efforts to aid local businesses. But, what is unclear at this point is whether that strategy will pay off for shop owners and residents.

Posted by Brian Lustig at 10:22 AM 0 comments

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National Small Business Week coming up

By the time the general population catches on to the upstart, innovative companies, they have usually grown beyond the "upstart" phase. It is hard for us to remember Google as anything but the behemoth it is today; same for Facebook. But both - and thousands of others - were small businesses at one time, driving change and pushing the large, established companies to match their pace of innovation.

April 21-25 is National Small Business Week, a week-long Small Business Administration (SBA) event that has been declared by every President to formally recognize the small business community's vital role since 1963. It would be an oversight if SmallGuyPR didn't at least mention Small Business Week because, after all, I have had the pleasure of working with a number of small business clients over the past year - and remain inspired by the entrepreneurs who lead them.

The events will take place at various locations in Washington, DC and New York City; but if you can't make it the entire event will be available live via webcast. But what the week is really about is honoring some of the most successful and intriguing small businesses from around the country, while hosting discussions on some challenges that the small business community faces.

So if you are in DC or NYC the week of April 21st make a point to catch at least a day or two of the event activities.

Posted by Brian Lustig at 6:18 PM 0 comments

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