A work rant
Occasionally I share some thoughts with my teams and colleagues. This was an 11 item rant. Why 11? I was in a This is Spinal Tap kind of moment.
11 things in my head
- Media coverage is not a panacea. If it were, Monica Lewinsky would be president of the U.S. and BP would be company of the decade. I subscribe to the doctrine of agenda setting when it comes to media relations. The media doesn’t tell people what to think, it tells them what to think about.
- I’ve launched more than 100 products, announced more than 125 acquisitions, 50 partnerships and dozens of events across North America, Asia Pacific and Europe – two or three were memorable.
- The best PR campaigns are those that are experiential and drive activism at the grassroots or customer level. Most of these can then elevate into media coverage.
- TiVo was the worst press launch I’ve ever worked on. It was 100% focused on the technology and never considered the lifestyle play. It remains my biggest learning lesson. HP’s “e-services” launch was the second worst project I was involved with.
- One of the brands I admire most for its resurgence is Lacoste. Once a brand for preppy suburban teens that died with the advent of hip-hop and grunge culture – now transcends both demographics and two generations of consumers while maintaining its niche appeal. I own no Lacoste clothing.
- Everyone in the company does PR and will tell you how to do your job — until there is a crisis or someone asks how to measure PR. The best PR people are prepared for both.
- My favorite quote is from the late great John Wooden: “Don’t mistake activity for achievement.” It’s both a memorable sound bite and universally applicable for anything.
- I am frustrated by the fact that we agreed on what our number 1 priority is months ago and we’ve done a total of 2 tactics worldwide to address this in the first half of the year.
- Your biggest challenge as an in house PR person will always be staying focused. See #6 above.
- PR people train spokespeople on the fact that audiences remember very little about a message and are impacted mostly by the visuals and experience of the communication event – yet we spend most of our day-to-day time spinning on messaging.
- Occasionally I hear a PR person say something and I think, that’s bang on. This is bang on – and Nick is one of the best PR people I know.
I Googled myself
Yea, so what?! So, I just Googled myself. It’s the modern day version of looking up your name in the white pages. Only better!
Navin R. Johnson. 1 listing in the white pages.
Unlike our boy Navin, when I Googled myself as ‘jose mallabo ebay’ i pulled up 1.4 million hits. Since you asked, most of those hits were as a spokesperson for the ecommerce company. I scrolled through some of them and ran across this gem of a story on the CNET Blog from 2008.
There was lots of hub-bub about a strike and all the Valley media were jumping all over themselves to cover this “weeklong” boycott. Hmm. There was no boycott. The only thing that happened for a week was me explaining that there was no boycott. Here’s the lesson learned: don’t believe everything you read. Especially on a blog.
We’re all just sitting home in our underwear watching re-runs of Love American Style. Yea, I’m that old. Just Google it.
- Jose Mallabo
Shannon Brown: All you all, get in my poster!
Posted by Jose in Uncategorized on June 15th, 2010
I grew up on heavy doses of Dr. J, Michael Cooper, #23, Larry Nance, Clyde Drexler and Dominique Wilkins throwing it down.
All those guys were great but all of them were over 6′ 6″ tall. I’d argue that Shannon Brown is the best in game dunker among all of them. He’s 6′ 1″ and unlike other shorter dunkers in the NBA can get up and throw down in traffic with power.
Look at the rim down there.
Don’t believe me? Get some here.
- Jose Mallabo
Schadenfreude.
Posted by Jose in Uncategorized on May 18th, 2010
Schadenfreude. Taking pleasure in the misfortunes or discomfort of others.
We all do it at some point. Or at least I’m cynical enough to cast that halo out from me to all of humanity and assume you all chuckle at the plight of others — even if it’s just sometimes. I’m not talking about laughing at the starving or the homeless. That’s just flat out wrong. But sometimes, it does give a chuckle to the inner Don Rickles when a faux pas happens in plain site.
Today, I had to drop a clothesline on someone who made a public statement that was just blatantly celebrating the folly of another. While clearly qualified to make the correction, it’s also ironic it came from me because I still get a chuckle at this once proud PR guy: James Andrews.
Full disclosure: I worked at Ketchum some time ago. Great agency. And FedEx is one of the terrific companies I’ve had the pleasure of working with in my career. They sponsored and ran community relations programs that I’ve never seen equaled by any company (e.g. Trees for Troops).
FedEx delivers Christmas trees for U.S. military families. That's the right stuff.
I guess Mr. Andrews didn’t have that perspective when he chose to make fun of his client’s HQ city of Memphis, Tennessee.
- Jose Mallabo
Jon Stewart asks if Apple is the Man
Posted by Jose in Uncategorized on May 3rd, 2010
Just damned funny. I’m not talking about his Flock of Seagulls lid in the pseudo flash back, but more about the lampoon on ”raiding” a house for a cell phone.
Apple police raid Gizmodo guy's house
Enough said.
My one lazy eye
Posted by Jose in Friends and family, Funny on April 12th, 2010
Ever wonder why you don’t see too many cross eyed people anymore? It seems like I haven’t seen anyone with strabismus (cross eye) since I was being treated for amblyopia (lazy eye) in grade school. Just before the 2nd grade started I was diagnosed with lazy eye. To treat it, my eye doctor made me wear a gauze eye patch over one eye and eyeglasses on top of the whole mess.
I can still remember the first day of school. The horror. I lived right across the street from school, so I walked there with my trumpet case in one hand and books in the other.
As I approached the school on my right side, I felt the sudden impending doom of 400 school kids playing in the playground all zoning in on my gauzed up eye and military issue frames. They looked like this:
But with my natural dorkiness and the cotton eye patch, it made me feel like this:
The closer I got to the school entrance the more self conscious I became and almost involuntarily I put my trumpet case on my shoulder — carrying it how an 80’s breakdancer lugs his boombox and cardboard dance floor. Of course, the moment I made the right turn into school, my classmates got full view of my half mummified face. Years of therapy and endless amounts of beer later, I can laugh about this but what I’d give to kick the crap out of that optometrist.
I’m convinced that while the glasses over the patch did next to nothing to cure my lazy eye, it probably scared off dozens of would be abductors and allowed me to roam the neighborhood un-menaced by playground bullies and overly aggressive homeless people. That aside, I’d've rather just walked around with a baseball bat in my hand and sharpened wood chisel in my pocket vs. wearing scuba gear on my head.
Needless to say, I’m glad kids and parents have medical alternatives to this today.
Now to get rid of band camp.
- Jose Mallabo
There are only two kinds of people
For a while I was brainwashed into believing that there were multiple kinds of people. As I’ve bumped along in this current life, I’ve come to see the light and now accept that like Chuck Klosterman says, there are only 2 kinds of people.
Those who know what this is …
The venerable four seam fastball
… and those who do not.
The people who can, on their death bed, identify not just this grip but the time and place to throw it during a baseball game aren’t just my kind of people — they are God’s kind of people. I know that because God is Nolan Ryan. For it’s that level of attention to art and science that I think makes life worth living. If you can sit 200 yards away in the bleachers watching a ballgame and call the correct pitch that the pitcher should throw in a specific situation, you deserve a place in eternity. And, in my man cave (if I had one).
My only goal for the second half of my life — that I’ll simply call “when I’m a legitimate old fart” — is to toss one of these bad boys over the home plate at Angels Stadium. It’s a simple yet lofty goal as the only old farts allowed to stand on the hill are either in the Oval Office or former ball players trying to rehabilitate their public image.
I could care less about a white Mercedes or house on some body of water that’s too far away from emergency services to be ideal for old folks. But to hear the pop of a mitt at a big league park from a pitch I’ve tossed — bring that shit to me, man. Then bury me under the mound.
The people who do not understand what this is or why generations of fans like me cut out of work in April to see a 1:05 p.m. game are probably the same folks playing with their BlackBerry or iPhone while sitting behind home plate. Too bad that screen is there to protect you. Maybe you can go to the Genius Bar and look for an app that makes a sinker sink and 4-seam fastball rise.
I love baseball.
- Jose Mallabo
I have 2 words for Tiger
Simply. Boring.
I kept my mouth and blog shut when he was beating on his Escalade and TV shows were running sound bites of him leaving voice mails to one of his concubines. Yes, I said concubine. Look it up. During his faux press conference I may have uttered the word “staged” and “ridiculous” forty three hundred times in the post mortem of that unfortunate event (not sure really what to call that other than an event). But, somewhere there has to be a publicist or PR person hanging from a rope for selling that fiasco into the Tiger camp.
Now that it seems he’s back to playing golf, I can’t keep my keyboard shut. Off with the gloves and on with the truth. The capital T truth is that Tiger is a formulaic cliche anymore. As boring as watching soap disintegrate under the drip of a shower head.
See if you can fill in just about any sports star gone bad into this timeline below without changing the formula (I’ll even help you with these names — Andre Agassi, Magic Johnson, Mark McGwire, Kobe Bryant and for you older farts Steve Howe).
1) Prodigal sports talent takes pro level by storm
2) Young pro becomes larger than life celebrity on and off the field
3) Star starts lifting weights (Magic did this after he contracted HIV)
4) Fall from grace caused by drug abuse or one too many visits to the concubine farm
Tiger, I’m bored with you dude. Do something interesting like try a new sport. While MJ underestimated what it takes to play on the diamond, at least he wasn’t boring. Until then, I’m yawning at you and am starting to miss John Daly. He at least had a personality and had the balls to be himself 24/7. Light up that smoke John and swing at it like you wanna hurt its soul!
- Jose Mallabo
We talkin’ about practice?
One of the most epic post game interviews ever. Allen Iverson and practice.
Iverson challenges the media's question. God love it.
A lot of people think Iverson is a thug. Who knows? Who cares? I don’t. I just know he’s a flat out great ball player who throws his body around with abandon. I’d pay the absurd NBA price for tickets to watch a 6′ tall guy play wall to wall for 48 minutes.
From a PR perspective he tries very hard to do what all PR people in a turnaround situation try to do — change the conversation. He makes a couple of tactical errors — largely baked in the mistake of repeating the question around ‘practice’ in his answer, not once but over and over — but God love his approach. If not, I do. Challenge the damned question and don’t roll over to an uninformed missive pointed your way.
That said….
Are we really talking about the iPad? It’s a tablet PC. A tablet PC. We talkin’ about a tablet? Not a game. Not a real PC. A tablet?
As Allen would say, ‘c’mon man!?’ It’s a tablet.
Let’s call a duck a duck. The only reason that people are taking what would be a chubby BMW car payment and putting it into an oversized iPhone, is because its design is pretty slick, not because they really need it. It’s frightening to me that in an economy like this where California still has an unemployment rate that is second only to Michigan’s, people are dropping stupid money into a toy they don’t really need. What would that money do for something really worthy? Like rebuilding Haiti or something closer to home, like rebuilding the hideous Interstate 880 freeway that looks like something a 3rd world country would be proud of (barely)?
These 2 iPads will go right next to the 2 Betamax players I bought from Crazy Eddie's
People. We talkin’ about practice? We talkin’ about a tablet? This device will not make you taller and it will not serve as a proxy for having a personality that makes you more attractive (except for in certain parts of San Jose). It will not fill that chasm in your lifeless overworked lives. You’ll need humanity for that.
Quack.
- Jose Mallabo
Donkey
I was in the middle of an inane, but probably funny diatribe about Silicon Valley cubicle life with a co-worker over a carnitas burrito bowl at Chipotle when he simply blurted: “donkey.” God, Chipotle really is a typical California strip mall kind of eatery that when I’m not there fits in my mental video reel that plays as part of the opening scene of Weeds season 1 or 2.
I bet Agrestic has a Chipotle
Mario wasn’t calling me a donkey, but as it turns out there was one behind me in the street pulling a woman in what I can only call a buggy. Which really makes me say, really, a donkey? In Mountain View — the land of the imported German car that costs more than what its owner has in the the bank — a fucking donkey?
I’ve seen cows walking the streets of India and rats the size of large guinea pigs sprinting past $500 Allen Edmonds oxfords on the streets of Manhattan, but for some reason a burro sighting while eating a burrito at a faux Mexican restaurant is blog worthy.
Eight more years and I'll be old and stuffy enough to wear these -- which means I'm still working. What a depressing thought.
Elaine Benes has her sponge. I have my burro sighting.
Yadda, yadda, yadda…it’s Wednesday and we’re talking about Speedo’s at work.
- Jose Mallabo