The Tipping Point of Hot Dogs

What Would Malcolm Say?

Those in the idea business would have you think that getting your concept across is something mystical and esoteric. It's not. What you really need is a crazy idea and a little patience. Case in point: Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Competition, which over the past several years has grown from a cute local kicker story to major national news. How did this happen? And, more importantly, why?

The high-falutin' answer is that the "hot dog competition" meme, leveraged by the olde time brand equity of Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs, has finally reached a "tipping point," with the concept growing so large in our collective consciousness through media-saturated repetition that its prominance as a top news story this holiday weekend was a fait accompli.

Confused? Don't be. The real answer is much more interesting. The brainchild of George and Richard Shea, founders of the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOC), the Nathan's competition was a stroke of mad, Old School PR brilliance which the duo has worked hard to develop into a mock sporting event. The "History" copy on the IFOC's site is the giveaway:

"Competitive eating is among the most diverse, dynamic and demanding sports in history. It dates back to the earliest days of mankind and stands alongside original athletic pursuits such as running, jumping and throwing. If you have 30 hungry Neanderthals in a cave and rabbit walks in, that is a competitive eating situation. Of course, in the last two centuries competitive eating has been practiced with somewhat more formality."

The Malcolm Gladwell marketing geek appraisal isn't wrong. It just doesn't plumb the depths of what the Brothers Shea are really up to. America is a nation of fat bastards, so what better way to poke fun at overconsumption than to create events to celebrate it -- and make a few dollars in the process?

This is PR at its best, folks. I call it the "two-fer" -- major media coverage of an phenom which subtly makes a subversive point. It's hard to say if Eric Schlosser would be amused, but anyone with a few active braincells should get the joke, especially after perusing the IFOC's site.

Of course, this is not the sort of campaign you're going to get from a big agency. It's the stuff of the mad media genius alone at his keyboard after a few too many drinks and not enough sleep. In a way, it's almost as if whenever big agencies try such antics they are sure to go awry. Take, for example, Deutsch's recent Snapple disaster, which left Union Square Park slick with multi-colored ooze.

To most people, PR is about writing boring press releases and foisting them on the media. Bad move. You wonder why your message isn't getting out there? Well, there's your answer. Now, the antics of the IFOC may be offensive to many, but the spirit of what they do should inform any good media campaign. The elements, to my mind, are as follows:

1) Creativity

2) Humor

3) Fearlessness

Look at it this way: if you're not getting reporters dying to write about you, you're doing something wrong.

So Much for Cruise Control

To Some, A Media Meltdown

In the current issue of New York Magazine, Ken Tucker waxes apologetic about Tom Terrific's purported "media meltdown." To him, it's evidence of a wacky new persona he finds endearing and one would that would never have come to fruition under the iron-clad image management of his former publicist, Pat Kingsley. These are valid points, indeed. But what's at the root of the situation? Most say it's sexuality, but I'm thinking it's a branding issue.

When you're talking about a product, whether it's a celebrity, a consumer good, or a company, the most important ingredient is narrative: what "story" you have to tell the media and what you have to sell the consumer. What's Tom got these days? A great track-record, sure. But it's been a long time since Jerry McGuire.

I'm not here to debate the maturity of the man's recent work. His antics have got nothing to do with art. It's commerce, pure and simple. Here you have a guy who used to do major boxoffice well on his way to Kevin Costner obscurity. After the disastrous performance of Samurai, he knows that Worlds is probably his last shot at retaining his status as a blue-chip entertainment brand.

Since Tom's past 40, he really can't work the "I'm-getting-married" or "I'm-having-a-baby" ploy used by younger celebs, most recently Britney, Jack White and Rene Zellweger. No, for Tom, his boy-next-door routine is past due, so in absence of a personal milestone to parlay into a new brand position, Tom has opted for the tried-and-true role of wildman. It's not a bad strategy, but it should be regarded as a temporary one. Not being Brando or, God forbid, Mickey Rourke, it's not a mask that fits Tom for the long run.

What happens in the meantime should be interesting. After going bananas on Oprah and talking nonsense about Brooke Shields, there's no telling what Tom will say or do next. My only hope is that the product he's trying to sell doesn't get lost in the mayhem. The plot thickens, but hopefully not too much. Just ask Michael Jackson.

Yes, What about Alternate Reality Gaming?

This Chicken Is Not Subservient

At the end of his fine overview of Alternate Reality Gaming, ClickZ's Sean Carton asks all the right questions about this new form of buzz marketing, assuming, of course, that you have no expectations about quantifiable results.

Alternate Reality Gaming, for those of you unfamiliar with the concept, draws consumers into a unique branded environment which appears to be something completely different than what it actually is. The gateway can run the gamut from a strange video uploaded to the Internet to a cryptic URL posted at the end of a trailer. In either case, the goal is to engage consumers in your branded message before they are aware of what is actually happening.

The granddaddy of ARG, of course, is the online viral campaign for The Blair Witch Project, which in the long-ago days of the Internet succeeded in creating an incredible word-of-mouth for the indie horror film through a series of fake Websites, most of which were created by the film's creators. More recent examples, which Carton cites, include Microsoft's "ilovebees" campaign for Halo 2 and the Mini-Cooper Robot Hoax, a low-bandwidth effort best thought of as a successful version of the disasterous Village promotion.

Carton, while attempting to be a booster for this new form of marketing, leavens his article with ethical questions about how far marketers can go and what to do about spammers and scammers. Carton should be praised for his effort, but, really, when it comes to a campaign, there is only one question: did it add to the bottom line?

Personally, I think ARG's are great, but so far I don't think they've done much. Is the BK chicken sandwich sold out because of the Subservient Chicken? Are people buying more Minis because of the hoax? I think we all know the answer to these questions.

Still, from a brand positioning standpoint and for PR purposes, ARG's have been a homerun. In the future, I don't think the main challenge is ethical, it's about creating more effective campaigns.

What should be expected?

1. Quantifiable results beyond site traffic
2. Unique codes to track the effectiveness of the campaign
3. Consumer opt-in
4. A tighter relationship between the campaign and the product.

To do otherwise is to risk alienating your customers and allow the rich possibilities of ARG's to devolve into an expensive demonstration of your marketing team's creativity. No offense to Carton, but, to me, these are the most crucial concerns.

Time to Share the Blame on Pay-for-Play

The Fault Does Not End with Williams...Or Big PR

A recent article on AlterNet dismisses Armstrong Williams as a "small fry" in the whole government scandal involving paid endorsements and VNRs. Diane Farsetta, the author of the article, instead widens the scope, placing the lion's share of the blame on Ketchum, Fleishman-Hillard, Hill & Knowlton and other blue-chip agencies whose "lack of transparency" she considers the true culprit. Ms. Farsetta is right to open the issue to broader scrutiny, but as someone who deals with the media all the time, I would have to say that she doesn't go far enough. Why not call out the biggest culprits of all: reporters themselves.

We needn't descend into crass accusations to point out that it is ultimately the responsiblity of the media to police itself. This is exactly the message that CBS News sent to the world when it fired everyone connected to the 60 Minutes II piece about President Bush's military record and forced Dan Rather into early retirement.

On an equally soul-searching note, it was also what drove the New York Times to go to such great lengths to examine the full extent of the damage done by the ficticious reporting of Jayson Blair.

Indeed, there are many other examples of egregiously bad reporting we could cite, but I think it's clear that media organizations are fully cognizant of their responsiblity to the public at large to present news as news, not advocacy for any particular political or corporate agenda.

Ms. Farsetta, perhaps owing to her presence in the media, has left this portion out of her argument. It's a minor point, yes, but it strikes at the heart of what has been missing thus far in the "pay-for-play" scandal.

It's a no-brainer that large agencies should be more transparent; at the same time, it should be at least part of the general discussion why there weren't more background checks by news producers into Mr. Armstrong's business interests or why affiliates would run VNRs without even an investigative frame. Imagine press releases being run unredacted -- it's the same difference.

If a veteran journalist like Dan Rather can be taken to task, why not the reporters in this scandal? This is not finger-pointing; this is reminding the media where the buck stops. Ketchem et al. were undoubtedly at fault, but who are the true gatekeepers? A lot has been made, by the left-leaning press in particular, about casting VNRs as propaganda, which only goes to show a general ignorance of what VNRs truly are.

Simply put, VNRs, or Video News Releases, are rich-media versions of press releases. As such, they are obviously advocacy pieces, intended to cast the issuer in a positive light. In this instance, the VNRs were apparently not properly labled, but any news producer worth their salt should be able to spot them a mile away. No matter how slickly produced, they are patently no more than what they appear to be.

As with the Williams controversy which kicked off this current scandal, the true action of the media should have been to properly source and frame these pieces. To do otherwise is ultimately the fault of the reporters involved, not the producers of this content. Ms. Farsetta, and like-minded media critics, should be mindful of this last crucial step in the news process if they wish to aid the community at large in their future reporting.

Rosie's Truth Is the Ultimate "Spin"

Meet the Gonzo Blogger

Much has been made of the quasi-poetic rantings of the former talkshow host, former Broadway producer and short-lived magazine publisher. But one thing media watchers of every stripe seem to have missed is just how much "spin" is wound up in the apparent truthfulness of Rosie's effort.

Unlike other embattled celebs who have turned to the Web as a disintermediated way of communicating with the masses in a clean, targeted style, Rosie is direct, unscripted, indiosyncratic, her words pouring out of her with such feverish urgency that the normal conventions of spelling and logical thought are secondary to the simple, human message: "I am Rosie, and I hurt."

Compared with the cool calculation of Martha Stewart's prison-bound expositions, Rosie's are shockingly fearless, which is precisely why we should wonder if a covert form of crisis management isn't at work.

It may be dismissingly cynical to say that "truth is the ultimate lie," but Rosie's attempt to publicly address past wrongs is not to be discounted. In almost every entry readers are treated to further intimate observations of her court case alongside day-to-day personal events that show the world "the other Rosie."

Clearly her case still troubles her very deeply, yet it is its repetition within a confessional frame that suggests a new form of "spin;" one guided by an internal publicist whose instinctual strategy is right out of the pages of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink.

In her Times interview, Rosie claimed that she simply wants to "put it out there." Indeed she has, but even without the well-thought-out committee approach of Martha Stewart, she has everyone thinking about her in a new way.

In the same piece, Gawker editor Jessica Coen jokingly likens her to William Faulkner, and on Metafilter, even the site's usually jaded community of hardcore technophiles has softened to her cause. "You know what?" writes one visitor. "I applaud her courage (now I sound like I belong on her show) for just expressing herself just as anyone else would."

Can anyone argue such kudos? You can dispute Rosie's methods, sure, but the results are superb. Whether we're looking at the birth of a new, edgy cable show remains to be seen, of course. But for now the strategy, conscious or not, is working perfectly.

Rosie is no Lenny Bruce. She is fighting back with style and humor, not stinking up the public stage, depo in hand, awaiting the final crucifixion. You can call it "self-expression," or given its potential career-changing consequences, you can consider it one of the most gonzo comeback strategies we've seen in quite some time.