Musings & Meanderings

The Walmart blog saga over the past couple of weeks leaves me bemused.

The general cry of betrayal over the blog itself is hard to understand. That goes for other fake ‘reality’ plays as well. Among the distinctions I observe made by those offended are 1) that there is some sort of inherent promise conveyed by the the phrase ‘reality television/video’ or the word blog which requires a standard of brutal honesty not found in any other form of entertainment, communication, or day to day life, and 2) that any fictionalization is a deliberate con job.

To some extent the phenomenon of blogging itself has fanned the fire of these sentiments. Before blogs, people who communicated publicly on the web, using their real names rather than pseudonyms, were mostly all selling something. This included those selling goods and services as well as those selling the brand of themselves, through dispensing free advice or to attain fame and notoriety, as examples. When you’re selling, you present your story. Is it a true story? Usually? Sort of? You’re going to tell the best story you can and leave out things that don’t improve your prospects, no different than you do on a first date or in a job interview. We take each story offered publicly with however many grains of salt we choose.

Why is blogging so different? Do we really believe that no one is ever telling any fictions on their blog? That everything written is some sort of soul-baring absolute truth? Since when is entertainment only acceptable when put on by private citizens at personal risk and for no material gain?

‘Real’ people in media is hardly a new phenomenon, either. They’ve been going on quiz, game, and talk shows since the 50s. Most of us develop a personal way of viewing the daily examples of this, a way of deciding how much to believe. We understand easily enough that real people in media are there to get something out of it, whether just their 10 minutes of fame or including material rewards as well. The requirement that participants meet some standard is usually the best of this genre.

Fake ‘real’ people aren’t exactly new either. When you watch an infomercial with people just like you telling how company A or product Z changed their life does it never occur that they might be paid actors?

I keep getting the strong impression that the Walmart blog is viewed as fraudulent, but since no one has actually been defrauded, the strongest words being flung at it are sleazy and unethical.

This sentiment is mostly being expressed in the blogosphere - I doubt that most Walmart haters or shoppers, many of whom aren’t even aware of what blogging is, have much interest in yet another corporate marketing ploy which is just a simple piece of theater.

Thanks to media, we are finally living in a world and time where good personal theater can offer attention and rewards to anyone and everyone. We know that we have to learn to discern constantly whether what we hear and see from others is real.

In blogging we have individual voices with an opportunity to be heard widely for the first time. That is important and valuable. Expecting that this medium, as it grows and evolves, won’t be largely usurped by money driven individuals and companies is naive. Those of us who value this platform as a personally enabling one, and who wish to protect that value, will not be able to do so by fighting the big money interests over the turf. They’re on their way in and no individual or group is going to stop that, either by banding together in protest or by crying over the corruption of this world that so many have invested so much of themselves into building. The only answer for those who care about this, I believe, is to focus on change and evolution, to evolve new versions and layers of this world ten steps ahead of the money. Remember that money doesn’t lead or innovate, it only follows.

I do recognize and value that there are core groups of bloggers who abide by ethical and moral standards in anything they publish, including journalists and a few business leaders. The defining factors of different types of personal gain that motivate blogging will continue coming into sharper focus as the medium grows and changes. This just is.

As for the Edelman role in this mini saga, I am equally bemused, not by their actions but by the general response to them. Reading Rick Edelman’s and Steve Rubel’s blogs gave me a very clear and immediate image of who these men are. I grew up in business with men like Richard Edelman, and met plenty of charming consultants such as Steve along the way as well. Edelman is a public relations firm. This means that their entire business is composed of numerous, and often elusive, hidden agendas. That’s how they make their money. They are agents, hired guns.

Here’s the letter post I’d wish I could write if I were in their place:

Dear Fellow Bloggers,

Our business is spin. We are masters at it and aim to be the best in the business. Theoretically, we could vow to accept only truths for spinning and decline to spin lies, but the reality is that truth isn’t black and white, and spin is manipulation. The actual lines we can and do draw are based on fraudulent or otherwise criminal actions, not on shades of illusion. More importantly, it is the nature of our business that our clients are forever bringing us ugly, unpleasant and messy situations which we are then expected to make pretty. That is much of what we do. It would be wonderful if shiny brand spanking new clients consulted us from day one about how everything they decide to do is going to look, but they don’t. Even better, if we could direct the day to day thoughts and actions of every one of their (and our) employees, then everyone Edelman would always smell like roses. In our dreams.

As bloggers participating in conversations about marketing and pr, we freely share our knowledge and expertise. We do not and can not discuss our clients or their business, and this is the normal way of things. Transparency in this business is a fairy tale. We believe in working towards higher industry standards of ethical behavior and practice. Our efforts in this regard start with communicating best pr practices to every one of our clients, but ultimately their business decisions and behavior are not in our power to change. We’ve had the courage to join the conversation here and believe that we’ve made a valuable contribution. Doing so benefits us and our clients, but it also benefits the community as a whole.

Sure, there’s an inside story to the Walmart blog. It’s not going to be told. There are thousands of stories, magnificent as well as tawdry ones, that will never be told. If you want to be privy to such stories, then get to work, get successful, and start living them, from the mundane to the brilliant to the hair-raising.

We’re good at what we do. We care about what we do. Let’s get on with it.

Yesterday I wrote about knowing, understanding, and caring about people through what they do. Today I’m thinking about things that prevent us from understanding each other, and especially the barriers we build around ourselves. Every time you define yourself, and your peer group as well, whether that definition is hip and cool, or highly moral and ethical, or cunning and lethal, or erudite and sophisticated, you’re automatically excluding the majority of people from your ‘type’. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you exclude them deliberately or in any negative way, but the basic idea of ‘you’re not like me’ is a very powerful barrier to our knowing one another.

Every one of us is somewhat like a walking computer, loaded up with operating systems and management programs and databases which are a sum total of experience and knowledge acquired to date. We’re most relaxed and most comfortable in familiar and repetitive situations, since we tend to believe that we already know everything we need to about the people and usual events there. This familiarity means that we’ve already constructed our personal m.o. and don’t have to anticipate the stress of confronting or adapting to the unfamiliar.

We all have very specific types of environments in which we feel at home, be it office or playground or restaurant, and we gravitate to others who are most like us in every way. This is totally normal, and it actually does make most people more productive as well. Spending energy on learning about the new and foreign and unexpected isn’t a particularly attractive investment of resources to most people much of the time. One of the reasons for this, that we rarely consider, is that the vast majority of us are very risk averse.

If you think of someone you know who you’d call a risk-taker, chances are that it is in a daredevil kind of way, and that it is associated with unnecessary danger in your mind. There are, though, many different types and levels of risk, and grouping them all together like a Halloween grab bag from which we might gingerly choose one trick’or’treat at a time, or better yet enjoy one vicariously via something such as attending a horror movie, only limits and closes us in to smaller and smaller worlds.

Anything that is not well documented through experience in our personal ‘database’ tends to get categorized as a potential risk. Most of us go through a period into young adulthood where trying new things regularly is normal and exciting, but our preference usually increases, as we grow ‘older’, for less and less risk taking. Applying this to meeting new people, though, to relationships and communication with them, makes no real sense. High risk is a concept that belongs to sky diving and playing craps, not to striking up conversations in social circles different from our own.

Based on that, reaching out to form new relationships would seem quite straightforward. All it would appear we have to do is to open our receptors to new people in new places. The problem with it, and the reason it’s so hard to actually learn to do, is twofold. First, opening reception to new people is only the first of many steps. Our starting viewpoint, the way we know to listen and interpret, is rooted in our primary circle of identity, which doesn’t match that of outsiders. Second, the new people are just like us, rooted in their primary circle of identity. Even when you take the second step, and stretch mentally and emotionally to get a preliminary glimpse of their viewpoint, you’ll perhaps get a glimmer of what it looks like, but are facing the necessity of their doing the same before you can get close to making a real connection and opening communication. If you’re the instigator, then you have to be prepared to go the extra mile until you achieve an equal response in return.

This isn’t an easy thing to learn if you haven’t done it before, and if you approach it like a kid who has to eat their carrots and broccoli to get to desert you’re not going to do very well at it. Why do we do it at all? There are a small handful of us that simply love doing it, but the benefit of learning how is enormous to every single one of us. I believe that we should consider it as essentially valuable as mastering arithmetic and math, or learning to read and write.

This skill, of learning how to understand and connect with people who are different from us, is a way of fulfilling a great many human desires, both selfish and unselfish. Through it, we expand our horizons and opportunities many times over.

We find things we need. Need a bank loan? Really understanding how bankers think and why is going to get you there.

We find things we want. Want to grow your business? Really understanding who your larger market is and why is how you’ll connect with them.

Best of all, we find things that, to our surprise and delight, make us happy, such as new friendships and new passions.

If this is risk, then life is risk, and risk is grand.

In his post on Friday titled The Most Frustrating Thing, Matt Mullenweg says,
” Technology doesn’t matter. Design doesn’t matter. ”

He leads this toward the current clarion call that users and usability matters, and then goes on to add that while all 3 are important, they aren’t going far enough beyond the superficial to reach the heart of what matters.

Upon first reading this post, I automatically added to his words:
Technology doesn’t matter. Design doesn’t matter. Users don’t matter.

This is not, as it appears, contrary to everything I’ve said and believe about needing more focus on users in web development. I’m still a big Kathy Sierra fan and not just because I love her new office.

How can users not matter? Exactly the same way that technology and design don’t in the view Matt proposed.

Analogize it all to the real world. Our physical constructs are technology, from buildings to roads to services such as electricity. They have no purpose by themselves without context and use. The way we lay them out to be navigable and decorate them to look pleasing similarly has no purpose by itself. Now picture a billion people. They are sitting or standing or milling around in or through those places and pathways. Their existence, in itself, has no particular meaning.

The conclusion to draw from this is what matters is context and relationships, but that isn’t much use in actually understanding how to participate and build and make things better, so I’ll take it further to personal analogy.

People don’t matter. What they do matters.

Every single thing you do tells me who you are and that is why I recognize that I like or love you.
Things you do tell me whether and how much I can trust you.
How you do things tells me how you think and which things you choose to do or not do tells me a lot about what you believe in.
How you decide to dress and present yourself, what you order in a restaurant, and how you prefer to pay for it, all these things tell me about you, and if I like or am attracted to you, or even if my interest is just based on the fact that you have something I want, watching what you do and how will teach me how to get closer to you, or get something from you or to give something to you.
Even the words you speak, which do have meaning (hopefully), can’t guide my understanding of you by themselves and out of context.
Your behavior can draw me in or repel me.

The last statement works both ways. What we do here will draw people in or repel them as well.

I think that what we, who are developers, users, and potential users, need to do is stop trying to guess what people might want. Asking people what they want isn’t much better either. Knowing who they are and what lights their fire and what gets them out of their chair and out the door, or running to turn their computer on first thing when they come back in, is what matters. What we do is a roadmap to what we want.

So it isn’t your existence that makes me care about you. It is how we can interact, what we do, including for each other or even third parties. It holds true across the gamut from pure personal selfishness to common good and morality. I care about a stranger called Kevin Poulsen because he did something to protect our children.

What I did, and what I wanted, and what I cared about yesterday isn’t necessarily exactly the same today. Maybe that’s because I met you.

Disclosure Does Not Eliminate Conflict

Disclosure is a ‘remedy’ for conflict. The word remedy here is used in the legal sense. Making full disclosure is nothing more than revealing the involvements and relationships where the agent has legal and moral obligations. It reveals that the agent has potential conflicts, and it further connotes that they have hidden agendas. Disclosure puts you on notice of this, and requires you to evaluate how much risk you might be incurring in dealing with them, an evaluation that can frequently rest on the simple question of how much you trust them personally, since their disclosure cannot include any material facts. It effectively puts the onus on you to observe caveat emptor in dealing with them on related matters, and usually mitigates or removes potential legal liability that the conflict may result in for them.

Making disclosure may seem like a simple and clear business practice, but it usually isn’t. The professions that deal with it daily include advertising agencies and real estate brokers. They serve clients who operate in the same industries, and the legal concept of agency carries more onerous duties and obligations than, for example, the simple ‘duty of care’ required in law by an officer of a company. It is not uncommon for an agent to disclose relationships to each of two clients in related businesses, and subsequently have to withdraw from one of them.

One of the ways in which professionals who deal with conflict regularly attempt to address it is through erecting what are known as Chinese Walls, imaginary (and movable) barriers between members of their organization who work with competing clients. This mechanism, originating in the legal profession, is only as effective as the ethics of the person practicing it.

A lawyer’s fiduciary duty carries an even stricter standard of obligations than an agent’s duty, and their policies and practices regarding conflict will be much stricter and more clearly delineated. Any large enough organization usually does have the ability to separate individuals working on competing accounts completely, but there will usually be (and needs to be) one or more senior partners who have a clear overview of conflicting account activity.

Although these concepts are formal and legally defined for any business area where the ever present and real risk factors translate into large sums of money, (or highly personal such as medical information) they can be as easily applied to any service business at all. Their importance is directly related to the sensitivity of the information involved. For example, you might rely on your hairdresser not to reveal the touch ups he or she performs for you on thinning or graying spots, but wouldn’t think twice about your mechanic discussing the replacement of brake lines on your car.

Transparency

I find the attempt to apply this concept to any agency practice, or any multiple relationships requiring confidentiality for that matter, impractical. It limits itself to nothing more than basic ethical standards and codes of conduct. Being someone’s agent means being privy to confidential information about them, their practices, and their plans. It means constantly increasing one’s knowledge base about them and their business …on their dime. This is where some of the greyest areas are.

If an agent is paid by X to develop intelligence and derivative approaches about and for their business, then he/she will be better informed and wiser about these business areas in general. In practice they may share this knowledge freely in a variety of circumstances, providing they do not disclose any specific client information. Sharing wisdom and experience with one’s peers can advance the status of the profession as a whole. Displaying it to prospective new clients is a natural process in continuing to grow one’s business.

Exactly what is shared, and how and when, though, are such situation specific questions that it is usually impossible to construct detailed guidelines of conduct for them. In practice, this area is based more each individual’s personal judgment calls than on any written or formal guidelines. Every agency relationship is a personal one, and we are well advised to consider every professional who acts as an agent based on everything we know and learn about them personally. If that individual is not the final decision maker, then we should understand that we are also deciding to specifically and personally trust the person with final authority, as well as any others in any chain between them.

Transparency for a service where an agency relationship is created applies, at most, to a clear statement of business practices with a commitment to follow them, any practices which are identical for all prospective clients, and might also include some delineation of the parameters of ‘custom’ practices. Beyond that, for any ethical agent, lies the general knowledge area better described as Opaque, and past this the full scope of their business activities, which is carefully guarded by complete Privacy.

This is why.

Can you imagine the difference if every one of us did something? I don’t know Kevin or any of the whys and hows and who else contributed beyond what is in the post I linked to above. What matters to me is the doing.

We too often feel that we can’t do anything. It isn’t true. Even the littlest things matter, something illustrated very well by the Broken Windows theory.
We too often close our eyes based on a confused interpretation of rights and freedoms …forgetting or ignoring the fact that they go hand in hand with responsibility, for ourselves and also for those around us, and especially children. Abdicating that responsibility, we leave it in the hands of government and authority, and then criticize their handling of it.
In reality, every one of us, through our actions or inactions, contribute every day to the whole.