Affordable Care Act Launch Snafu: Opportunity to Revise Strategic Messaging?

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was officially rolled out via healthcare.gov on October 1, 2013. Its launch came with a bevy of technical issues, inviting criticism from many ACA opponents and healthcare consumers. The ACA, also known as Obamacare, has received its fair share of criticism from its inception, and the botched rollout of the online healthcare site did not help matters.

The technical issues users experienced were originally blamed on heavy traffic flow, but the causes ended up being much deeper. The administration has yet to directly assign cause to all of the actual technical issues that are making the site difficult for people to use, likely because they do not know what all of the problems are yet. The administration has launched a “tech surge” team to assess and address the technical issues, and it is now estimated that the site will be up and running successfully by mid-November.

For such an important initiative, many Americans are wondering why the site was never rigorously tested before going live. Further criticism reveals that the glitches users have been experiences breeds a low trust level when it comes to the security of the site. People are entering important personal information, it is crucial that the site be seen as safe and secure. The problems have also made the process confusing for users, the very thing that Obamacare was supposed to eradicate.

President Obama recently spoke to the public and apologized for the issues with the ACA’s official launch. During the speech, he gave the 1-800 number people could call if they were having problems while on the site. The idea seemed to be to vaguely address the issue, and provide contact information for people who need help until the site launched again. Still, many critics maintain that Obama does not seem to be doing enough to fix the problem.

A couple of PR expert s, Ben Boyd and Greg Jenkins, spoke to NPR on how they would recommend overhauling the Obamacare message as a result of recent events. Excellent suggestions included focusing on success stories from families who have benefitted already from the ACA, the President taking responsibility and showing himself as integrally involved in solving the problem, and embracing “hyper-transparency”. Given what we have learned in class thus far and the importance of this new initiative, what other advice would you offer to those steering the messaging for the ACA launch both now, and when it re-launches in mid-November?

Links:      http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/10/26/240831691/pr-experts-obamacare-message-not-just-the-site-needs-fix?ft=1&f=1014&utm_campaign=nprpolitics&utm_source=politics&utm_medium=twitter

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/29/healthcaregov-cost_n_4175131.html

UBER Cute: Car company and humane societies join forces for a PURR-fect campaign!

Call it Christmas for the cat-crazed among us (myself included), National Cat Day is a real thing. Started in 2005 by animal welfare activist Colleen Paige, the (not federal- but should be) holiday is held to revere our fabulous furry friends and raise awareness about the homeless pet epidemic.

This year, joining your crazy cat lady aunt, startup company Uber partook in the feline fiesta.

Uber is a fast growing, app-based alternative to taxi cabs. Users need only download the Uber app to their smartphones to request a car- which will be a sleek and stylish black sedan or SUV. For a few quick hours on National Cat Day, held October 29, however, Uber offered one more service- kitten delivery.

For only $20, Uber would come to your door with a kitten in tow. The kitten could be loved on for 15 minutes, because nothing makes a day better than kitten cuddles. Except for maybe kitten cuddles and cupcakes. The smart startup is one step ahead of the game, also including a couple of cupcakes in the kitten-kaboodle package.

Some critics of the kitten delivery service said the publicity stunt was cruel, as it might be frightening to haul a kitten around from house to house, person to person all day. However, Uber attempted to sooth the nay-sayers by announcing they will be donating all profits made from the service to three shelters in the cities the kitten delivery was offered- Seattle, San Francisco, and New York. More, the delivery kittens were not merely getting their 15 minutes of fame; the kittens were potentially getting new homes. All delivery service purr-ticipants were available for immediate adoption.

Although the total amounts donated to each shelter have yet to be released, Uber knows how to make money. Founded in 2009, the new company is already worth an estimated $3.4 billion.

Happy Cat Day!



Reference-
Pepitone, Julianne. "Uber Is Delivering Kittens for National Cat Day." CNNMoney. Cable News Network, 29 Oct. 2013. Web. 30 Oct. 2013. <http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/29/technology/uber-kittens/>.

University of Denver Preventative Email: Be Careful with Your Halloween Costumes

Patricia S. Helton, the Associate Provost for Student Life, just sent an email to the University of Denver community about the Halloween season. Here’s the section I wanted to focus on:

So, if you are planning to dress up for Halloween, or will be attending any social gatherings planned for this weekend, we encourage you to think on these questions before deciding upon your costume choice:

· Are you wearing a funny costume? Is the humor based on “making fun” of real people, human traits or cultures?

· Are you wearing a historical costume? If this costume is meant to be historical, does it further misinformation or historical and cultural inaccuracies?

· Are you wearing a ‘cultural’ costume? Does this costume reduce cultural differences to jokes or stereotypes?

· Could someone take offense with your costume and why?

Why is it necessary for the University to send out an email like this one? Well, trending on social media is a wide array of tasteless, offensive Halloween costumes. For instance two guys decided dressing up like George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin was a good choice. 

The Huffington Post wrote an article about the Halloween costume and included people’s tweets in response to the picture. The photo was originally posted on Facebook but once the photo went viral one of the guys deleted his page. As you can see, one is George Zimmerman and the other is dressed in black face as Travyon Martin. The two guys are from Florida too. Seeing how this issue is causing some outrage amongst social media sites, DU’s email is a preventative measure. Halloween is supposed to be fun, full of candy, dancing, candy, tricks, and more candy. Yet, when people’s costumes are offensive, in poor taste, and misunderstood it takes the fun out of the holiday. So my question to you is, is DU’s preventative measure necessary or a good idea by our communications department? I think it was a good call given the negative publicity surrounding these two guys. The last thing any organization would want is bad publicity, especially a university that just hosted the Presidential Debate and had George W. Bush on campus. Thoughts?

Links:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/28/trayvon-zimmerman-halloween-costume_n_4170528.html

Here's the email sent to the DU community if you didn't receive it:

Faux Corporate Social Responsibility: Are Our Retweets and Likes actually helping?

I found this picture on Tumblr. We’ve been talking about social media and the potential uses PR professionals can employ. However, a photo like this (photoshop, of course) criticizes how professionals use to mediums to gain support. We’re counting followers, subscribers, likes, repost, and retweets. But what are those likes and retweets actually doing? If you’re working for a non-profit focusing on hunger and disease in third world countries and you have implemented a successful campaign on Facebook, but someone posts this on your Facebook page. How would you respond?

This picture poses many questions and issues that as future communication professionals we need to consider in developing campaigns. Yes, we can create campaigns and use social media to reinforce our messages, but one of the criticisms of companies’ use of social media is what are they doing for the public. Are they actually bettering the public? Is it just a message? Corporate Social Responsibility is becoming more and more important in the minds of viewers and consumers, and corporations are responding adequately. We’re seeing this with the abundance in green marketing, environmentally friendly products, corporate philanthropy, and cause marketing. Companies are talking the talk of doing social good. But are they walking the walk?

The link below is an article about the top 10 cause marketing trends in 2011. The second link is to a Forbes article talking about the competition and alliances amongst companies in cause marketing. It’s interesting to think about corporate social responsibility as a competition. Corporate social responsibility for some companies is becoming a marketing campaign or PR campaign, where the message is good but the company isn’t extremely active in the public good. I’m thinking about for-profit companies but is this an issue with non-profits? Is this something we, as future professionals, need to incorporate into our messages? We can design messages for the public but should we design messages for internal involvement in our CSR campaigns as well?

Top 10 Cause Marketing in 2011

http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/12/top-10-marketing-corporate-responsibility-trends-2011/

Causing Marketing Competition and Alliances

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhessekiel/2013/09/17/cause-marketing-coopetition-on-the-rise/

Picture link:
http://marketinggrad.tumblr.com/post/65069277635

CougarLife Advert Too Violent: Image Management?

I check AdWeek pretty religiously for funny, interesting, entertaining advertisements and to catch up on the latest ad-related news. I came across this article talking about cougarlife.com. I’ve seen the commercial a billion times on television and every time I laugh. There’s a woman walking around a bar talking about younger woman being self-involved, clingy, and cheap (basically). The ad is for the dating website in which younger men can find cougars.

            This ad has been playing for sometime now, however it made AdWeek news because apparently it’s offensive…in the Australia. Really Australia, really? Apparently the ad is “too violent” because the cougar woman pushes younger women. Additionally, a woman said the ad was offensive because “it depicts an older women inferring that the men in the ad would be better 'taken care of' by her, rather than the younger women. It seemed to suggest that she would be a better 'mate' for the men in the ad than the younger women”. This consumer’s comment is hilarious. It’s a “Duhhh” moment. That’s exactly what the ad is inferring. The older actress says it. She says older woman know what they want and younger girls don’t. Watch the ad and ask yourselves the question, is this ad offensive to me?

Australia banned the advertisement citing it was too violent. The reason I wanted to discuss this ad was because I wanted to talk about what are some possible ways CougarLife can redeem itself in Australia. Personally, I find the ad funny. But the fact of the matter is Australia banned the advert and although the company would probably like to respond to the consumer’s comment with a giant “DUHHHH”, as a company they cannot. So my question is what are some ways CougarLife can do image management in Australia?     

Links:

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/australia-bans-ad-solely-because-one-woman-pushes-another-153393

Ad is included in this link as well

Why the Visual Web is a Billion Dollar Trend

We have been doing our class presentations on the various social media outlets and how they can be used effectively by public relations professionals. While doing my research on Pinterest, I came across an interesting article about the Visual Web and how it is influencing the virtual world.

The Visual Web is made up of websites that value pictures over text (think Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr). As many of us have discussed from our own experiences and what we have heard from various presenters, images tend to attract more traffic and generate more "hits" than lengthy, wordy posts. Looking at a picture takes less time and energy, which allows visitors to stay on the sites longer. Another positive of having so many pictures is that advertisements are less obvious. Many people have complained about the overwhelming presence of ads on Facebook, while Pinterest was having problems with their users seeing the ads at all.

It took some time before the tech world knew what to do with Visual Websites.  They tend to attract the younger generations as well as women, however, they have begun to reach a broader audience world-wide.  In the UK, studies of Pinterest have found that it is actually dominated by men, but this is not typical). What they are finding is that these sites are bringing in more ecommerce traffic, they are more lucrative, they have faster growth and more active members. This is probably what led Facebook to buy Instagram for a massive sum of $1 billion and Yahoo to buy Tumblr for $1.1 Billion. Pinterest is estimated at being worth $3.8 billion.

Seeing how effective using the Visual Web can be, how can public relations specialist re-think their way of interacting with their publics to incorporate these websites to generate more attention to their own business?

I, personally, think that companies will begin to use these websites more and conduct more research into how they can use them effectively. I think we are only beginning to know how to fully take advantage of these tools and I foresee them being utilized more than Facebook down the line.  A picture speaks a thousand words, and I think, once communications specialists understand it fully, the Visual Web will become an important PR tool for all businesses.

Links to articles:
1. http://voyagegroupin.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/where-social-media-is-heading-its-time-to-invest-in-visual-web/
2. http://readwrite.com/2013/07/25/mindboggling-facts-that-will-make-you-care-about-pinterest#awesm=~olBrhTIdpHCChv