Boomerang

Since moving to San Francisco six months ago, my roommates have had the average shelf life of a fledgling social network. I have lived with 16 different people, some of whom were merely nameless faces I passed in the hall on the way to the bathroom. Looking for perfect housemates requires hours of forced conversations among complete strangers. Through my experience, I have learned that there is one universal question at the end of every craigslist open house post: “What kind of music do you listen to?”

Music is a powerful faith, chock-full of devotees brought together by their mutual loyalty to some hip-hop disciple or rock god. You are what you listen to. The online community imeem.com revolves around the world’s passion for rhythm, and that is why it’s not just another social network. imeem is a craving.  

The best part about imeem is creating personal streaming, music playlists from its vast and diverse free library. Pull up your imeem page and you have all your favorite music at your fingertips to listen to at work or share with friends.  

The thousands of users from around the globe sharing their personal collections make discovering new music easy on imeem. Other music sharing Web sites like Pandora and MySpace are limited by its selection. And though imeem leans toward personal use, companies and business professionals can create blogs, upload photos and calendars to share with clients and colleagues. As you can tell, I’m an imeem convert, despite my progressive hearing loss, under a music spell.

Just Do It. Where’s the beef? What happens here, stays here.

There is nothing like a good tagline. And for organizations that develop (or stumble upon) a t-shirt-worthy one, a good tagline can boost brand value considerably. So what happens when an organization with a noteworthy catch phrase decides it’s time to refresh and rework its image? Do they drop kick their slogan and hope for the best, or use it as the cornerstone of the new identity? 

The United Negro College Fund opted for the latter. After four years of research and planning, UNCF decided to keep one of its most defining assets when it unveiled its new look on January 17. Since grabbing the public’s attention with the phrase, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste” in 1971, UNCF has become an icon in American history, as the largest private minority education assistance program in the nation. But after 30 years, while the tagline and the public’s admiration for the brand endured, UNCF’s ability to convey its ever-expanding mission to key audiences dwindled, creating a need for a facelift.  

The new identity of UNCF, created by Landor Associates, is designed to help clarify the mission and vision of the organization and increase its relevancy with its past, current and future beneficiaries. UNCF’s new logo features an updated torch, the use of color, and its acronym, rather than its full name (similar to AARP, formerly the American Association for Retired Persons). 

Michael L. Lomax, UNCF’s president and chief executive, explained that the elimination of the full name was a nod to change in nomenclature since the 70s, as many African Americans no longer identify with the word “Negro.” Using just “UNCF” is a way for the organization to speak to its current stakeholders, without losing its heritage. 

The tagline is another story. According to The New York Times, “Surveys conducted for the organization suggest that the ‘A mind is a terrible thing to waste’ motto enjoys ‘exceptionally strong’ recognition by the public, but that only 56 percent of people make the connection between the slogan and UNCF. Mr. Lomax hopes the new campaign will tie everything together in the mind of the public.”  

While it may not ring true for a majority of organizations, UNCF recognized that the tagline transcended the brand, and is using it to help drive awareness in the wake of its redesign. A wise move, in my mind, because a good tagline is also a terrible thing to waste.

Life is constricted to all types of boxes: Our apartments, our cubicles, even our computers entrap us. For many of us, traveling has always been the great escape from life’s restrictions. Lonely Planet, known for its insightful travel guidebooks, is a company that has been fostering the idea of exploring the world and soaking up its beauty and different cultures like a sponge. Recently, I came across LonelyPlanet.tv and knew I had found one of the best-kept secrets of online video content.  

LonelyPlanet.tv inspires the adventurer in all of us through video clips accumulated by daring, off-the-beaten-path travelers. Of course, nothing surpasses the actual experience of  eating an exotic piece of fruit from a street vendor in Peru, or dipping your feet into the sultry water of the Red Sea. But when the box constricts and responsibility calls, LonelyPlanet.tv allows you to visit a new land each day, virtually, without a passport. 

I love “Travel Tales,” a compilation of short documentaries created by amateur and seasoned travelers.. In less than 10 minutes, you can make a virtual pilgrimage to the Virgin Mary’s Wall of Wishes in Turkey and feel forgiven …well, virtually forgiven.  Another highlight is Bluelists, a collection of trekking recommendations.. It’s not your typical boring grocery list of tourist sights, but an anthology of inventive travel ideas for richer life experiences.  

So when the traveling bug starts to bite, soothe the itch with LonelyPlanet.tv—at least until you can go there yourself!

I don’t have an iPhone, and although I envy the people who do, I don’t have near-term plans to acquire one.  My friends regularly testify about how wonderful it is. “Get it for the touch screen,” they coo.  “The REAL Internet – Google Maps, New York Times, YouTube – all on your phone!” they exclaim.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m no Luddite – I love gadgets and gizmos and spend a substantial portion of my income on them.  I’m also not one of those people with a bizarre vendetta against Steve Jobs over the backdating thing.  In fact, I’ve been a happy Mac driver since 1999.

Here’s the thing:  I want the iPhone to be better.  I want at least one year’s worth of collective genius geek wisdom poured into this thing.  I want even more battery life.  I want it to operate on any carrier network without the hack this kid traded for a very fast car.  Of course, I also want it to do my taxes, vacuum my apartment and cook a pot roast.  Not going happen, I know.

Some things get better with age.  Sam at FL250 reminds us that an “old aviation axiom says: ‘Never fly the ‘A’ model of anything!’”  It is for this reason that I’ve held off in buying an iPhone despite the fact that I’ve purchased other first model year items like the original Sony Walkman – bought with money earned mowing/shoveling/raking about a hundred acres of suburban New York.  I’ve also been an early adopter of Internet services like now-defunct greats Webvan and Kozmo.com.   

Dan Nystedt at IDG tells us that “more than 2,700 companies will be jostling to show off their wares at CES” in Las Vegas this week.  Combine that tech orgy with Macworld, Demo, CTIA, and myriad events throughout the year and there will be plenty of shiny, sexy new things to covet.  I can’t wait to have to make those wonderful choices.

(PHOTO CREDIT: LAS VEGAS NEWS BUREAU)

Reading Simona Covel’s article “Is This Article Worth $6,000?” in The Wall Street Journal on the ethical and monetary value of pay-for play PR placement is, for me, a fascinating test of patience and diplomacy. It is a follow-up to a previous piece Ms. Covel wrote called “Paying for PR – But Only When it Works” and wonders if by pointing out the public relations cost of writing about a product or company, a journalist has done her readers a proper service. The article has created an active dialog among entrepreneurs, communications professionals and obdurate neophytes, all of whom have opinions about the efficacy of PR.

By paying only for placement of an article, a small (or large) business misses out on one of the key learnings that PR provides: finding out that your product or service is not newsworthy. You see, part of what a good PR person does is to craft a story that has relevance to the current market, is targeted to its audience, and will benefit the client. What some may call “busy work” could be, in part, a PR person pitching a story to a reporter, receiving feedback on why the pitch doesn’t resonate, adjusting it to make it even better, and pitching it again. That busy work could also include analyzing competitive positioning in order to best it, or perhaps even brainstorming new ideas.

Also, while I admire Guy Kawasaki, and agree with his notion that entrepreneurial spirit can provide valuable momentum to a marketing campaign, I disagree with point number 4 in the comment written by reader Raza Imam: “Publicists are afraid of controversy and drama; it’s too risky to your image. But that’s what readers are really interested in.” To the contrary – I would say that, after 15 years in journalism and PR, the fear is with the clients. While many imagine themselves as willing to take a risk, it is the rare bold CEO who can follow through with a PR campaign that may raise some eyebrows or even hackles.

There are many, many more points to be made, but I will choose just one final one. Securing coverage in The Wall Street Journal is, for most PR people, a significant accomplishment because the reporters are smart, savvy and not easily wooed by anything other than a highly intelligent story. That said, just getting the hit isn’t enough; it’s about the length, the tone, the tenor, the location within the paragraphs, the inclusion (or lack thereof) of competitors, how lovingly the reporter crafted the article… Okay, you get it.

Any PR person – pay for play or not – who thinks just getting the coverage is enough is in the wrong business.