Dear President Obama - It's Almost Christmas and Where's Your Mojo?

Although I am a Democrat and still trying to be a supporter of our President, leaving the tax cuts for the most wealthy Americans for the next two years could cost him the votes of people like me.

Oh I get that you negotiated for another 13 months of unemployment benefits (but as the guy I'm dating pointed out - only one year versus two and that's how most people think), and a couple of other really important tax breaks for the middle class.

But Mr. President it doesn't matter. All that will be reported and all that middle class people will remember is that you let the rich keep the tax breaks that cost the country way, way more than it could afford. You're supposed to be the defender of the rest of us, the anti-Conservative, anti-rich, anti-Fox News etc. leader. You're supposed to help us.

I know you think you're doing what's right for the country But Mr. President don't you realize that by allowing the Bush tax cuts to stand you've completely caved on a very symbolic and vital issue for mainstream America right before Christmas? John Boehner may be the Grinch but well I don't even know who you are in that story. Maybe the little girl Cindy who goes up to the Grinch and asks him so innocently why he's so mean.

PR is a tricky business and goodness knows I've made mistakes as a PR person. But perception does outweigh reality when it comes to mass media. The no spin media is the super spin media. The unbiased media reports what it thinks will get the highest ratings. And the newspapers and blogs which seem to have the only good writers left in America aren't read in full and certainly not often by the people you've just really pissed off.

Yes we elected a thoughtful, educated man to bring this country together. But those characteristics don't work well in the post-Bush era. The right is too good at tapping into national disappointment and building rage. Right now what we need is a super hero. And Mr. President you're no a super hero. You're just a man who is making decisions that alienate your base.

Think I'm over dramatizing? Have you seen what the pundits are saying? The conservatives are now saying your approval ratings are lower than George Bush's. Of course they are skewing the data but most people don't know that.

The liberals are just plain disappointed. They don't get it and they think you've sold them out. I can't help it but I kind of agree with them.

And then of course there's Jon Stewart who I think is smarter than the majority of media and all he can manage to do is come up with golden showers raining down from the rich to the rest of us. That's a parody of trickle down economics which you said you would eliminate.

No wonder none of us have any Christmas spirit. It's beginning to look a lot like you're going to be a one-term President, and that is a very scary premise.

Aimee's First Visit to the White House - Obama Wants Local Companies and Schools to Learn from Each Other

“Fighting a forest fire with 1000 eye droppers.” That’s how David Washington, acting CEO of Change the Equation, a non-profit, described the current effort to improve STEM (science, technology, education and mathematics) education in the United States.

There are hundreds of local and grassroots programs around the country addressing the nation’s need for improving STEM education, by companies and universities and non-profits through federal grants.

But no one knows who they are, or much about each other and as a result, there are no role models. No one wants to reinvent the wheel and without the wheel there are a lot of companies with money to spend and no one to help them. That’s a quandary my company would like to have.

This discussion was part of a larger meeting at the White House yesterday about President Obama’s science education initiative called Educate to Innovate. The Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) talked briefly about the work the president is doing which includes:

Creating a National Discussion about the need for improvement in STEM education by referencing it in his speeches and conversations with industry and other stakeholders.

Making the White House a Science Education Role Model – President Obama held an astronomy night at the White House recently, Michelle Obama attended the finals of DOE’s National Science Bowl this month, science is now part of the annual Easter Egg hunt, and the White House is planning its first ever Science Fair.

Convincing Business and Industry to Get More Involved in educating the next generation of scientists and engineers, both at the grassroots and the state levels.

Providing Support to States so they can Improve Science and Engineering Education through an array of grants and special programs.

Identifying Corporate STEM Education Role Models and sharing what they do right with other organizations who want to help.

A couple of hundred businesses, non-profits, teachers and other STEM stakeholders were invited, including myself as a representative of the USA Science & Engineering Festival.

So all the pieces are in place. Science is Cool again. Our president says so. But how do we translate that into business/education partnerships that change kids’ lives. That raise the next generation of scientists and engineers? As a marketer I can tell you – start here:

Science has a Marketing Problem.

Approximately 30 million children a month watch PBS and other media and they need to be exposed to more science. Many of them don’t think “Science is Cool” and we need to find ways to convince them that it is. We need more science programming. We also need people who kids turn to as role models to tell them that science is cool.

Science needs a Campaign Selling Science

Some companies have already begun to push science with their employees. For instance, Bentley Systems, an international software development company launched a program 18 months ago where it gave every employee $250.00 a year to spend on science education with their local schools. So far about $60,000 has been spent by employees around the world.

Time Warner Cable has pledged to spend $100 million to get more students involved in science and a national Public Service Announcement Campaign is planned to make science cool again. Ford Motor Company is very active in K-12 education and becoming more involved in STEM.

But it’s not enough, and I guarantee you that we’ll never hear about any of them.

Marketing 100 and Then Some

Fellow marketers I can hear you shaking your heads a long with me – Guess what guys you need marketing. You need communications. You need to create a strategic research and communications plan and get out there find out what corporations are doing – what works and what doesn’t – what is paid for by federal government grants and what are companies ponying up.

Say nothing of the fact that someone should have tracked this all along. We’ve got a president who wants to improve science education. There’s a White House mandate.

Grassroots is fabulous but grassroots never gets coverage. I worked all of last year with a wonderful group of people all lovers of science called the Coalition for Public Understanding of Science – hundreds of science projects across the nation.

But when it came to communications the projects were supposed to do it themselves locally and then nationally. And the fact is they didn’t. It was a volunteer army. And volunteers get the job done – they don’t tell the world about it.

Science needs national events. Larry Bock, who is pulling together the first USA Science & Engineering Festival is a visionary. Science needs others like him. And all these businesses who want to do something need to support this work.

One woman put it quite succinctly when she asked: What’s my to-do list after this meeting?

Science needs a plan to make it cool again and an army of advocates out there talking it up. Without that, we’ll just have a lot of dedicated people who want to help and do - but sans the attention it deserves.

The Party of No Versus Yes We Can

I was in Nashville the other day visiting a prospective and current client and found myself in a bar next to a couple in their sixties. She was lovely, very into the music scene, and chatty. He found out I was from Washington, DC and do work in health care reform and wanted to yell at me.

Politely, more than twice, I told him I really didn’t want to discuss this with him. But he was on fire with his talking points which spewed out of him like vomit:

• We can’t afford it, it will bankrupt the nation.
• It’s socialism.
• I’m a small business owner, and it’s not going to help me.
• All of the polls say the American people don’t want it.

I politely (and anyone who knows me realizes politely doesn’t come easily), again told him I wouldn’t discuss it.

He went on and on until his wife dragged him out. Tried to watch the basketball game but Kentucky was killing the other team and in the end, he was like a strange, exotic bird, and the basketball game just screamed defeat.

The next day I had lunch with a client who doesn’t believe in the reform movement and has a pretty persuasive case why. I told him about Health Reform Bad Bar Man and said, “I wish I was that good at getting people to remember my talking points.”

That’s when it hit me – the Republicans are brilliant at developing talking points that are simple, resonate widely, everyone remembers and are used by all who hear them over and over and over again.

The Democrats suck at talking points. Obama won’t sink to the level of “they’re going to kill granny,” and who can blame him. But what about a nice big positive talking point about giving granny dignity and professional care at the end of her life. It may not be angry but at least it’s hopeful.

But not those Democrats. They don’t think that way. They’ve reused the same campaign theme for every candidate in the last two decades “Change.” A big vague talking point that has no meaning other than we’re going to be different. Then they get to DC and it’s the same old stuff.

How do you think the Republicans have managed to pin the zillion dollar deficit on Obama when he walked into office and found out it was far worse than even his advisers imagined? Declarative, basic points – he who runs the country is responsible for the mess he’s in.

If you keep telling people over and over again that Obama created this mess – and they’re not very smart people and regular watchers of Fox News – they will believe it. It’s indoctrination – talk about socialism that’s a pretty good example of it in action.

And of course, there’s racism involved – more than I ever thought possible in this nation in the second decade of the 21st Century. May not be on a billboard but its right there all the time. Just look at who makes up the Congress and Senate. The Republicans are white men, the Democrats are the rest of us. But I’m not going down that path today.

But there’s good news. Finally, with the health care reform bill passed the tide appears to be turning. Armageddon didn’t happen and it isn’t going too. The letter John McCain sent out saying we must repeal the health care reform bill sounded weak, hissy and undignified. Talk about someone who knows how to kill his own career.

The Democrats appear to have gotten their cajones back as well. They have new talking points.

The Republicans are the party of no.
We are the party of yes we can.

It’s a good start.

Check out this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-pLSdGa0M4

The Tightrope of What You Can and Can't Say

Oh Harry Reid - now you've gone and done it. Someone dug up a comment that you made about Obama being white enough to win the presidency and it's come back to bite you in the butt. When will people realize that in this hypercritical, scream-a-thon of a world we live in you just don't say stuff like that?

Full disclosure: I'm just as guilty as the rest folks - except I'm smart enough to know I shouldn't say it even after I did.

What prompted this blog post? Well it's not yet another politician putting his foot in his mouth. I pissed off someone and he wrote me a note at 5:30 in the morning and called me Uppity. That's right Uppity. The word the south used to describe slaves who wanted to better themselves and stuck up for themselves. Does Uppity mean anything else to anyone except what I just said? Not in my universe.

Why on earth would anyone use that word? Because he just wasn't thinking.

So that's my point basically. We walk this tightrope - us writers and business people. PR people, and lawyers and all of those who are scared to death of saying the wrong thing, end up not saying anything at all.

We have to find some sort of happy medium. Inform but don't offend. What are the hard and fast rules of actually saying what you mean and not screwing it up? Some thoughts:

If it's something you wouldn't say to your boss in front of his boss you probably shouldn't say it. Same goes for your mother.

If you wish you hadn't said it after you did you shouldn't have said it - We all know that moment of panic when you think you're going to get yelled at by a client, a friend, your parent or whomever - that's a bad sign.

Think about how what you say can be twisted before you say it. Watch Glen Beck, Fox News and Sean Hannity a few times. They are geniuses at twisting what people they want to bring down say and turning it into something offensive. Remember when Obama said the police acted stupidly for arresting a man outside of his own house and it was transformed into he doesn't support our police force? That was Fox News.

Take America's pulse before you create your messages. Now this isn't possible all the time, but we are marketers and PR people. We should be paying attention to what the national conversation, mood and world is saying. A few months after 9-11 a woman named Amber wrote a press release about how pita pockets were a comfort food that could keep us feeling warm and safe. She didn't exactly say that but it's pretty close to what she did say. She worked for a large PR agency. A writer for the Washington Post published the release and ripped her to shreds.

If Amber (it doesn't help to have the name of a stripper) had been paying attention, she would have thought about what an incredibly sensitive subject 9-11 was then. Her bosses and client should have known better too. You don't take advantage of a national tragedy. Unless you want to go to war in Iraq.

Never write or send anything you write when you are angry. An old boss of mine said this a couple of months before he fired me for doing just that. It was a nice firing - there was mutual respect - I had made them a lot of money - and they were good about it. He said, put it away and read it again when you're not angry. Then throw it out.

Listen to the language of the young. One of the only words that still means the same thing it meant when we were kids is cool. Everything else has a different meaning. A lot of it comes from rap music. And I have my own household test market - which certainly helps. A few of them - Tight - it used to mean close - "We are tight." Now it means virginity. Ego - it used to mean someone who was full of themselves. Now it's slang for a male sex organ.

So if you have any other advice for this tightrope walker of language let me know. I'd love to hear from you.