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June 15, 2010 -  The online press release has taken on much more significance than the old school 20th Century version. In the old days (say, 5 -10 years ago), PR agencies and in-house staff cranked out paper press releases and dutifully distributed them via regular mail to slightly overwhelmed, slightly interested reporters.

Man, have things changed – for the better!

Today, PR-educated publicity seekers (you), can not only get your fair share of the publicity-pie, you can now take your info directly to the public.

Reality: If you don’t know what you’re doing in writing and distributing your shiny new press release, you can waste a ton of time and effort.

Why reinvent the wheel?

Solution: Here’s a new, state-of-the-art, no-cost whitepaper:

“Writing Great Online News Releases: How to Release Your News Across the Web to Get the Best Results”.

The whitepaper includes the following essential topics:

• Before you write your release – a list of do’s and don’ts;
• Best practices for every element of your release: the headline, lead paragraph, body, boilerplate, contact info;
• How to optimize your online news release for web searches;
• A list of popular press release topics;
• A final checklist for formatting your release

Download it here.

I suppose it was just a matter of time before the Mancrunch stunt finally raised enough hackles in the gay community to motivate a few curious bloggers to do the legwork necessary to find out what was really going on.  Kudo’s to Lyndon Evans for writing a blog post that provides a fairly concise summary of the whole affair.  A second post debunking the Mancrunch controversy, written by Alex Blaze, provides even more sordid details on the site, its ownership and makes a direct connection between the site and other online dating sites of questionable moral values (i.e. these other sites promote affairs and secret/discreet relationships focusing primarily on sex).

(NOTE: Both links go to sites with gay content and may be considered NSFW in some situations.)

And here’s one other thing of note – it looks like this stunt (and the ensuing controversy) isn’t a first-time experience for Mancrunch’s ownership (represented by Bridge & Tunnel PR’s Dominic Friesen and Elissa Buchter).  As pointed out in a piece appearing in Tuesday’s LA Times (by Dan Neil), another site represented by Friesen and Buchter – AshleyMadison.com – ran the same gauntlet last year, generating tons of press and web links in the process.

The tv guys have caught on, as Mr. Neil reports in his column:

Martin Franks, executive vice president of planning, policy and government affairs at CBS, told Reuters: “A whole cottage industry has grown up out of trying to make use of network turndowns. . . . They’ve found a loophole in an otherwise well-intentioned process.”

So what’s the point of this whole exercise?

It’s all about search engine placement and creating as many in-bound links as possible for the lowest possible cost.  Because search engine placement means traffic and for web sites that charge desperate people a monthly membership fee – traffic means big bucks.  If you were searching the Internet for this kind of site, you would find over 2,000 stories about Mancrunch listed before the first link to a competing site.

Mission accomplished.

It’s too bad they had to hijack the Super Bowl to do it.  But for those of us not in the targeted demographic, we’ll hardly notice.  None of these marketing shenanigans are going to impact the telecast of the game – unless the Mancrunch people have a “Heidi moment” planned for the fourth quarter.

UPDATE: 02/03 @ 10:00 pm – Popped back into the office this evening and found a link to an article covering this issue that included an interview with me.  Big thanks to Michael Tripplet at Mediaite.com for taking the time out of his day to call me and talk about this entire situation in more detail.

And when I received a news release yesterday about the brewing “controversy” over the Super Bowl spot submitted to CBS by Mancrunch, I had my doubts.

As I’ve noted in my other post on this subject, I tried to confirm a few facts in the previous story and wound up leaving messages or missing late-night call backs.  Today, however, after being approached by Mancrunch’s PR guys for a second time, I submitted some questions (in bold) that were quickly answered by Mancrunch’s spokesman, Dominic Friesen.  What follows is the entire exchange, verbatim – and after that, my thoughts on this entire thing:

1.) Prior to the decision from CBS there were already reports that the spot had been rejected – primarily from bloggers covering gay issues. Was this outcome expected?

Not at all.  Especially given the fact that they accepted the Focus on the Family spot we thought CBS would eventually accept ours given the public attention.

2.) What do you think you could have done from a creative standpoint that would have forced CBS’s hand into accepting your commercial?

Based on their response to this, we don’t think they would take any commercial we created that promoted gay dating.

3.) Do you think a similar spot for a hetero equivelent (i.e. Fling.com, AshleyMadison.com or something like that) would have been accepted by CBS? After all, Mancrunch doesn’t look to be like Match.com or eHarmony - it’s about hooking up, right?

You’re comparing a dating site for single men to a cheating site like AshleyMadison.com?  Nowhere on our commercial do we mention sex or on our web site, for that matter.  We definitely think that if the spot contained a man and a woman kissing on the couch, there wouldn’t be an issue.

4.) What agency produced the ad? The concept and production values of the spot, quite frankly, don’t seem to be all that “out of the box” or expensive – why did it take the agency so long to produce your commercial for the largest advertising stage on the planet (the Super Bowl)?

We produced the spot in-house.  You’re right the spot didn’t take that long to produce.  The reason we only submitted the spot on January 18th was that was only when the web site was ready.  We literally just launched the web site last week.

5.) Why isn’t the URL for your web site included in the ad?

To be honest, we posted an earlier version of the ad. Here is the actual version.

6.) You now have over 5,000 inbound links to Mancrunch as a result of the publicity surrounding this situation with CBS. While it would have been nice to spend the $2 million (or more) to run an ad in the Super Bowl, do you still consider this effort a successful launch?

The effort is not even close to over.  If we can’t advertise in the same places that Match and eHarmony can, this is just the beginning.

7.) Do you intend on running any other television spots on network television this year? In your opinion, do you think the programming would influence the likelihood of a network to accept your creative (for example, would an ad produced for the Academy Awards be more likely to be accepted to run versus an ad produced for the Winter Olympics)?

Absolutely.  We plan on running on network television this year and we’re confident that any program that allows alcohol, erectile dysfunction and other online dating ads will allow ours … which we thought included the NFL.

Now, I’ve done a little more checking and have found some things that, I think, point out that this brouhaha is really just a big stunt – playing on the fears and deadline pressures of both the mainstream and gay media. In fact, in my view, this is a great example of “wag the dog” and shows why, as a society, we still have a long way to go to accept the differences between people and form a more civil society.

Let’s go through the questions I asked and the answers I received and I’ll attempt to point out why I’ve reached my conclusion …

Mancrunch was surprised by the rejection.  Really?
Bloggers covering gay issues were reporting that CBS had rejected Mancrunch’s advertising overtures yesterday.  I’m sure some of the editorializing on their part was based on an assumption of  pre-determined bias against an advertiser reaching out directly – and obviously – to the gay community.  I can understand that.  After viewing the spot, it seemed to me the commercial was made to be rejected – and, for a stunt like this, the spot HAS to be rejected to resonate in sympathetic communities – so I wasn’t surprised by CBS’s rejection.

But according to Mr. Friesen, they didn’t see it coming.  Really?  He claims that since the right-wing Focus on the Family spot with Tim Tebow was accepted, the Mancrunch team thought their spot would eventually be accepted given the public pressure (brought about in an afternoon).  Really?

Whether you agree with Focus on the Family’s anti-abortion/anti-choice/pro-life (you pick) spot or not, it’s clearly a spot advocating a public policy/political stance – not selling a dating service.  Mancrunch is clearly presented as a commercial venture.  They’re not advocating public policy related to mashing with your football buddy over a bowl of chips.

In addition to all that, if you read the rejection notice from CBS, you’ll see that there were also questions about Mancrunch’s credit that needed to be worked out.  This is a multi-million dollar buy we’re talking about.  In typical advertising situations, advocacy/political ads are “cash-up-front” buys which means the station or network know they’re going to get their money after the spot runs.  I’ll bet CBS would have been less inclined to reject Mancrunch’s spot had it been seriously produced and paid for in advance.

Creative changes – would they have made a difference?
Mr. Friesen says “no” – and I’m inclined to agree.  To a point.  Unless Mancrunch had produced this ad with the serious intent of airing it, there isn’t much you could do with it to make it worthy of the biggest stage of the year for advertising creative.  Really.  This is a crappy spot.  Having one character tell the other he “sucks” wouldn’t have made it out of any legit creative department in any agency I’ve ever worked in.

The spot doesn’t really do anything to sell the site, just stir up controversy.  But then, I suspect that’s the point all along.

Would a spot for a hetero equivalent site been accepted?
Here again, Mr. Friesen makes the point that if the spot had contained a man and woman kissing on a couch, there wouldn’t be an issue.  That’s true.  We’ve seen that issue time and again in television ads.  But these two characters aren’t just kissing – they’re mugging each other.  And they’re promoting a site that doesn’t say a thing about “finding a soulmate” or any of the other sappy slogans thrown around by Match.com or eHarmony.

No, Mancrunch is  - as the site claims – where many, many, many men come to play.  Doesn’t sound monogamous to me.  So, while Mr. Friesen is right when he says they don’t mention sex on their commercial or on their web site.  The music on the site talks about wanting to kiss a guy and the site promotes promiscuity by innuendo at the very least.

In addition to all that, I thought it was interesting that Mr. Friesen would single out my reference to AshleyMadison.com and show some offense at my comparison.  He claims the Mancrunch site is “a dating site for single men” (which is not stated or obvious on the site) compared to the other site which promotes affairs between married people (and was featured on CNN a while back, by the way).  His reaction is interesting to me not just because I still think it’s a fair question (as is the comparison to Fling.com) but because the PR firm Mr. Friesen is a principal in, Bridge & Tunnel Communications, represents AshleyMadison.com.  In fact, the Mancrunch spokesperson who left a message for me on my phone, Elissa Buchter, also works for Bridge & Tunnel Communications and as of January 11th was still serving as a media contact person for AshleyMadison.com.

What’s up with the spot?
As I mentioned earlier: in order for the stunt to work, people have to be outraged.  In order for people to be outraged, the spot has to be rejected.

And it’s much easier to reject a crappy spot than it is a good one.

But what ad agency, in their right mind, would take on a creative assignment to produce an ad with the expressed intent of having it rejected from appearing in the Super Bowl (besides GoDaddy’s agency, of course).  The answer – none.  More to the point, what client would say “Hey, I’ll fork over 2-3 million clams to make sure our first-ever, ground-breaking ad gets seen by one-third of all the people in America – but I won’t pay more than $500 to produce the spot.”

I don’t buy Mr. Friesen’s excuse here.  This is the best he could do because, I suspect he suspected that I’d call the agency if he gave me a name of an agency responsible for producing the spot.

The ad for a web site without a URL.  What?
Yeah, the first version of the ad I saw didn’t have a URL in it … I swear it didn’t.  The Mancrunch team sent me a new YouTube link, this time with an ad that included a tiny little “.com” after the Mancrunch name in the spot.  Not much better, but better.

So, which version did they send to CBS for evaluation?  How could they expect their spot to be taken seriously if they didn’t even get their own web site into their ad?

Was the stunt a success?  Mancrunch says “no” so loudly it has to mean “yes.”
The team at Mancrunch has to be eating up this publicity like crazy.  The FOX News hit was critical to the campaign’s success.  It legitimized the story even though it wasn’t a real story – even I could see that – but FOX News didn’t care.  Next to abortion, gay rights is pure gold to FOX.  It winds the stems on their faithful and drives tons of web hits and viewers.  The guys at Mancrunch know this and played FOX News like a fiddle.

And, I’m guessing, the guys at FOX News didn’t mind a bit.  They just laid back and took it like … well, like that baldish guy with the green jersey in the spot.

Once the fire was lit, other sites started jumping in.  My guess is this thing will continue to burn for a few more days and when it’s all said and done, Mancrunch will have tens of thousands of inbound links and an established place atop the gay-dating world.  Whatever that is.

Are we through, yet?  Unfortunately, Mancrunch has pledged to “fight on.”
I’m not so sure this is a good thing, but Mr. Friesen has pledged to “absolutely” plan on running on network television.  That means, I suppose, we’ll see this play staged again around some other event.  And why not.  For Mancrunch, it’s a no-lose scenario.  As long as their ad gets rejected, they’ve created a viral hit and generated tons of publicity and – more importantly – inbound links to their web site that will raise its profile among search engines and the like.  If their ad gets accepted, it runs and creates even more controversy (in all likelihood).

So, what’s the wind-up on all this?

This is, I believe, another manifestation of manufactured controversy like the fake US Chamber of Commerce Announcement or Balloon Boy controversy of last year and any number of other fradulent PR events and fake news that – over the long run – diminish what little confidence the general public still has in the news media.  It’s a shame to see that none of the major news outlets covering this story are doing anything more than dancing to the same tune implanted into FOX News’ brain by a savvy PR flack.

But it’s not really a surprise.

Where’s Howard Kurz when you need him?

UPDATE, 01/30/2010 @ 1:25pm (CST) – I’ve been receiving a few comments on these posts that have been, shall we say, off-topic.  I’m not endorsing or condoning a lifestyle.  This is a blog about media and marketing, not about politics.  And certainly not about people feeling their First Amendment Right to free speech gives them the license to use hateful words on my blog.

I follow the “dinner party” rules of blog monitoring … I allow and encourage spirited conversations about the things people expect to talk about when they come here.  And that’s advertising, marketing, public relations, publicity, journalism and the media.  Anyone who comes in here and tries to be a boor by wading into off-topic, red meat political issues will be shown the door.  Sorry.  But it’s my party and I make the rules.

After all, the outrage we should feel here isn’t about gay dating it’s about the manipulation of an all-to-willing media and people who would rather believe in grand conspiracies and imagined enemies than take the time to think about the messages they’re being fed and how realistic or reasonable they are.  This is just one of many examples as to why we all need to become better (and more critical) media consumers.

Echoing around the media blogosphere today (at over 1,700 5,000 18,000 posts and counting) has been the news that CBS Television is “considering” a television spot from a reputed dating site for homosexuals called Mancrunch.  And when we say “considering” we take that to mean they’ve received the commercial and, presumably, an order to air it in the Super Bowl for a couple million bucks – but the spot is going through a review by someone in the the Broadcast Standards & Approvals department of the network.

In the meantime, Mancrunch has turned on the publicity machine – generating maximum buzz by getting the red meat journalists at FOX News to bite on the story and proclaim that CBS is considering airing the gay dating site ad during the Super Bowl.   That, in turn, has lead to posts on the Huffington Post, LA Times and several other news sites to continue giving the story gravitas.

This is all great for Mancrunch and, I suspect, of very little consequence to CBS.  And why is that, you might ask …

… because as of this point in time, none of this “news” is confirmed.

This may, in fact, be much ado about nothing.  And that’s just what Mancrunch and other marketers who trade in controversy (like GoDaddy.com, for example) want.  You see, the controversy is much more affordable than the actual television time.  And thanks to the Internet, the residual effects of all the bloviating by pundits, bloggers and the rest will create thousands of links to Mancruch, lifting it above competing sites going for the same audience.

It’s brilliant, really.  And the PR firm involved in the kerfuffle, PR Media Now, should be congratulated.

So, why am I not biting on the story?  Why am I not outraged one way or another?  Why am I such a freakin’ cynic and suspicious of this entire thing?

For starters, I don’t have a political axe to grind or ox to gore.  I’m not in the target market.  But I am interested in advertising and marketing.  And there are plenty of things about this effort that don’t sit right with me and make me think that this whole controversy is manufactured.

First off, take a look at the spot.  It’s on YouTube and has less than 1,000 views which tells me that for all the web traffic the story is getting (there are over 70 comments on the FOX News story alone), no one is taking time to actually watch the television spot.  If you do, you’ll see some things that don’t make sense.  For example, the production values of the spot are really low.  Not “Calvin-Klein-porn-shoot-in-the-basement” low (on purpose), I mean this looks like it was produced by Wayne Campbell and Garth to run on Aurora Cable Public Access.

Further to that, is the language in the spot.  One character tells the other one he “sucks.”  What copywriter would write that and think that would pass by anyone?  Really?

The obligatory make-out scene which, undoubtedly raises the hackles of conservative viewers is, at best, staged.  It looks like two straight guys acting like they’re making out but not letting anyone actually see them make contact with one another.  It’s arbitrary and poorly acted … at best.

And finally, this is an ad for a web site – a web-based dating service – and the URL of the site isn’t shown in the ad.  Huh?

If this ad isn’t fake (as, I assume the controversy is), Mancrunch would be fortunate to have CBS reject the spot so they could hire a real ad agency to produce something that works for them and gives interested consumers the information they need to sign-up and use their service.

UPDATE 01/28/2010 @5:50pm (CST) – It’s now been four hours since I was first contacted by Mancrunch’s PR firm.  I expressed my skepticism the first time but the PR folks were responsive and reassuring that this whole thing was legit.  They offered to put me in touch with a spokesperson from Mancrunch, but I still haven’t received a call.  I understand that.  I would assume that they are busy dealing with bloggers who are convinced this controversy is legit and covering it thusly.  Mancrunch’s PR firm did give me the name of someone they said worked in CBS’s Broadcast Standards & Approvals Department and I’ve left a message on her voicemail as well.

I’ll make this promise: I’ll update this post as I speak with people and as I learn more.  If it turns out the story is legit, I’ll be sure to say so.  If I get a call back from the network contact provided by Mancrunch, I’ll make note of that here as well.  I will continue to make a few calls and see what else I can confirm on my own.

But know this – if this all turns out to be a stunt, you saw it here first!  (Well, actually you saw it on the LA Times blog, AdRants and the Brand Central Station Facebook page first.)

UPDATE 01/29/2010 @ 2:28pm (CST) – Just received word from Mancrunch’s PR firm that CBS has rejected the spot (here’s a link to a .pdf of the rejection notice).  I wasn’t able to get a hold of anyone at CBS for comment yesterday and, quite frankly, have been too busy to try and reach someone today.  I did get a returned call from Mancrunch last night but was out of the office and unable to take the call.

Looking into it in more detail, it appears this news broke a couple hours earlier and is now starting to climb up the media status ladder with stories on USA Today’s site among others.  Most are citing this news breaking on CNBC – which, interestingly enough isn’t actually referencing a story but rather a tweet on Darren Rovell’s Twitter account.  It was enough, though, to legitimize this entire controversy as far as USA Today is concerned.

I’m still trying to figure out what Mancrunch is trying to do with all this “free” lift via controversy.  As a result, I’ve asked the Mancrunch folks to answer a few questions.  Those questions are:

1.) Prior to the decision from CBS there were already reports that the spot had been rejected – primarily from bloggers covering gay issues. Was this outcome expected?

2.) What do you think you could have done from a creative standpoint that would have forced CBS’s hand into accepting your commercial?

3.) Do you think a similar spot for a hetero equivelent (i.e. Fling.com, AshleyMadison.com or something like that) would have been accepted by CBS? After all, Mancrunch doesn’t look to be like Match.com or eHarmony – it’s about hooking up, right?

4.) What agency produced the ad? The concept and production values of the spot, quite frankly, don’t seem to be all that “out of the box” or expensive – why did it take the agency so long to produce your commercial for the largest advertising stage on the planet (the Super Bowl)?

5.) Why isn’t the URL for your web site included in the ad?

6.) You now have over 5,000 inbound links to Mancrunch as a result of the publicity surrounding this situation with CBS. While it would have been nice to spend the $2 million (or more) to run an ad in the Super Bowl, do you still consider this effort a successful launch?

7.) Do you intend on running any other television spots on network television this year? In your opinion, do you think the programming would influence the likelihood of a network to accept your creative (for example, would an ad produced for the Academy Awards be more likely to be accepted to run versus an ad produced for the Winter Olympics)?

We’ll see what they have to say.

So much time is spent talking about audience engagement; and as marketers we often use the word “audience” to mean “customer.”  So much time and effort is spent trying to identify appropriate prospects and then doing what it takes to capture their attention, we often forget an audience who, if engaged, can generate a significant increase in the bottom line performance of almost any company.  Who are these people?

Your employees.

So often overlooked and very often ignored – most employees in most companies often feel disassociated from their employer’s balance sheet.  Sales and production goals are (very often) dictated and abstract, received without any kind of context to the work-a-day world in which most employees operate.

That’s why internal communications programs can do more than just improve morale.  Properly designed and implemented, they can work wonders when it comes to  improving operational performance.

To create the kind of marketing R.O.I. we’re talking about, managers need to think about profitability over top-line sales.  Improvements in operational efficiency can yield better margins (meaning more profit) on the same or lower sales.  Increased awareness of product and service offerings can lead to increased sales to existing customers (through the cross-selling of services) leading to both sales gains and profitability gains through reduced ramp-up times.

Internal communications programs that get employees on board when it comes to spotting new business opportunities can also result in bumps in top-line sales gains, too – although of all the employee-directed campaigns, this appears to be the most difficult to implement.

I would be interested in hearing your success stories (and your disasters) for future stories here at Brand Central Station.

It started off inocently enough.  But Beth Brody from BrodyPR made a simple mistake.  She e-mailed the same pitch to a big list of contacts and included that contact list in the CC field which ignited a series of “Reply All” responses that, in tun, went to the same distribution list.

Over and over again.

It’s sort of like the media relations equivalent of being at a rock concert and the audience gets more caught up in keeping that damn beachball bouncing around in the crowd than they do in what’s going on onstage.  Then, the next thing you know, the grumpy musical purists start yelling for people to sit down and the kids start complaining that nobody ever lets them have any fun anymore …

Lucky for me (I guess) that I was at a client meeting while all this was going on and I just walked in on the carnage afterward.  Today there’s been a virtual pile-up on the social news media highway – and I’m viewing it as a first responder.

Maybe “pile up” isn’t nearly as accurate as “pile on” when you see how other PR professionals took advantage of Beth Brody’s lapse in judgement to cast dispersions, fluff up their own reputation and build blog traffic.

Here’s what looks to have happened:

• Beth Brody sent out her pitch in the morning (7:45 am CDT).
• Approximately 17 minutes later, Donna Maria Coles Johnson of Monroe, NC “Replied All” in response and the die was cast.  Everyone on the first distribution of the release received Donna Maries response.
• A half hour later, Shel Isreal replied back to Donna Maria – again using the “Reply All” function.
• Within minutes, folks were starting to “Reply All” to let everyone know not to use “Reply All” to reply.
• People started getting a little snarky shortly after that and the sniping started.
• Ken Wheaton, of AdAge, weighed in at 11:19 am CDT and threatened to expose those perpetuating the email chain reaction.  Although Ken didn’t follow through with his threat (entirely), he did write about it on the AdAge web site.
• Not to be outdone by AdAge, John Capone of MediaPost offerred up a stoning at an OMMA conference to offending PR’s.
• By a little before lunch, things went from snarky to mean-spirited with people insisting they be taken “off this fucking list” and moving to have BrodyPR put on a blacklist of PR firms who spam.

By the time the email “spamalanche” was over, things were just starting to heat up on Twitter.

• In three hours, there were nearly 100 tweets about BrodyPR and the entire kerfuffle.
• A few PR’s dominated the online tar-and-feathering; most notably serial-tweeter Chris Abraham (@chrisabraham) with nearly 20 tweets on the subject.
• Others were tweeting and blogging about the event and there were those (including yours truly) who were blogging about the blogs and the tweets about the event.

So, what does all this tell us? 

First off, some people must have too much time on their hands. Honestly, the entire number of additional emails in my Inbox due to Beth Brody’s foul up and everyone else’s over-reaction to it totalled about 30 emails.  If I had been really put out by the entire matter, I could have set up a rule in outlook to delete anything with the subject header and I never would have seen any more emails past the first four or five.  (Read your Outlook owner’s manual, people!)

The second lesson is that the irony of fouling up an email pitch for a book on using social media for small business is more likely to hurt Beth and her client than all the pundit arm waving and chest beating.  Shel Isreal responding with a “Reply All” email to Donna Maria’s request is either blatant astroturfing or a huge blow to Shel’s credibility as an expert.  Neither is a good thing to have happen to your PR client.