Female Role Models X

Forgive me for not writing this sooner - I was in Ireland doing very important things like learning how they make Guinness.

So some double-chinned right-wing political hack whined about more women earning more money and times were so much better when June fetched Ward's slippers and brandy each night and things are so much worse now because of women with hairy armpits or something.  I'm honestly not that worked up about it because I've seen this guy before and he's basically had nothing useful to say about anything ever.

But then the Internet exploded and this guy got all kinds of facetime on TV and was a focal point on all the very serious political magazines - and of course all that did was reinforce the idea that the more stupid you sound, the more attention you get.

So it's time once again to respond to this garbage in the way I think we all should - celebrate some female role models you may not know right now but hopefully will soon.  This is the tenth installment of this series, but to refresh your memory here's the very vague criteria I use:

Someone an online mom can show her daughter [or son, a great point my wife made] and say, "See her? See what she's doing? See how she's living in the same world you are, with the same challenges you have, and see how she succeeds? THAT is how you do this. THAT is what I stand for. I want you to be like HER."

If you want to see all the role models I've featured you can check out the blog page or my FMR pinboard.   This edition's role models include:

Emily Finke.  The first thing you may notice about Emily is she kinda looks like Bat Girl.  Or maybe someone out of a Steampunk novel. But even if you aren't awed by her mad cosplay skilz, talking with Emily you quickly realize this forensic anthropologist/science communicator/feminist is really smart and always doing something to improve the lives of others. She challenges people to think of new and different things in new and different ways.

Carrie Mess.  People need to know more about where their food comes from.  That's where Dairy Carrie comes in.  She's a dairy farmer and a prolific blogger.  Dairy farming today isn't just waking up to sit on a stool and milk the cows. There is a TON of science and logistics and business and even politics involved.  It's long, hard work.  I met Carrie at the Alltech Symposium and I was struck not only by her friendly demeanor but by how accessible she makes the complicated subject of dairy farming.  She's a great ambassador for her industry.  My science communication friends could learn a lot from her.

Heather Barmore. I must really admire Heather because I rarely say nice things about Yankees fans.  She's an education lobbyist who shuttles between Albany and New York.  She's built a sizeable following on political issues and she's quite partisan - but because she runs with the BlogHer crowd more than the Netroots crowd she has great pals across the political spectrum.  That's a hard thing to pull off these days.  Her blog isn't just political rants, either - her writing displays more thoughtfulness, productive introspection, and courage than you typically find in personal/political blogs.

Cecily Kellogg. The Uppercase Woman is smart, outspoken, and fearless.  When she's not giving you excellent tips on how to improve your writing online or demonstrating that she's already figured out the online marketing tools you'll read about in the tech press next week, Cecily is taking on really tough issues and sharing all of the facets of family life.  You know Cecily is influential and important because she has critics who don't like her outspoken nature, they let her know about it, and yet she keeps doing her thing. Oh, and she has pink hair.

Yes, she really had to die.

An artist's interpretation of a crisis.  Sorry, Betty.

This week I led a mini-crisis simulation at the Alltech 29th Annual International Symposium panel on crisis management.  On the panel were three people who had outstanding reputations in this area - Gavin Megaw, Liz Kynoch, and Pat Wall.

If you're not familiar with a crisis simulation, it's typically when you get a bunch of people who are responsible for leading an organization and you walk them through a fictional catastrophe to see how they'd react and hopefully discover weaknesses in your organization that you can shore up.  Most companies basically think of a crisis that involves a plant fire or something - typically they set up a phone tree, call 911, and let the authorities take over.

That's a terrible situation, but in my mind that's not a crisis.  I crisis is really a loss of control. Terrible things happen.  Sometimes people die.

So I wanted to think of something horrific at the introduction of the scenario - something that would get the audience's attention, and something that would have an instant and enormous impact online.

So I killed Betty White.  A few people actually chuckled, but if you know the Internet you know what this would do to Twitter.

Then I killed 32 people who were residents of a US-based nursing home chain.

Then another 45 in Brazil.

Then dozens more in the UK.

Of course, just before the slaughter of innocent grandparents, I got a volunteer to serve as the CEO of "Big Mama Foods," the company who made the food that killed them all.  Immediately after selecting the CEO, the audience went out for a coffee break - and the CEO was ambushed by a camera crew.  When the audience returned, they were treated to a video of a "breaking news" story - that dozens of people had been killed by food linked to Big Mama - and there was the CEO, who just moments ago was chatting and joking with everyone there, up on the screen trying to explain why Betty White and hundreds more just died.

The whole thing went from Betty to Television in about 7 minutes.

From there it got worse - recalls, lawsuits, boycotts, global trade embargoes.  Even Nancy Grace announced tonight's top story on Twitter - "Who Killed Betty White?"

By then, no one was laughing.  And I kept reminding people that something like this can really happen - because each segment of my scenario was based on something similar that actually did.

The good news is our CEO had a great board of advisors in Gavin, Liz and Pat - explaining what is happening at every stage of a very real and very public crisis. They talked about their roles as communicators, operations leaders, regulators, and scientists. They talked about all the people you have to keep informed - key customers, shareholders, regulators, the media, employees, and so on.

Gavin provided people with a great checklist, and the people at Alltech provided their own crisis management plans for everyone to look at.  Liz and Pat provided their leadership perspectives and advice.  I just really wanted to convey one thing - in the digital age, a crisis moves at breakneck speed.

The next day, I spoke with Trent Loos at Rural Route Radio about it in great detail. A crisis is a lot of things.  But to me, more than anything else a crisis is a chance to show the world your mettle. If you're prepared, the world will know.  If you're not, the world will know that too.

iCrisis, version 2.0

Three years ago I predicted the coming armageddon for brands by discussing databases and  highlighting the Good Guide mobile app.  If you haven't heard of it, that's the app where you scan the barcode of a box of cereal in a store with your smartphone and the app tells you that the cereal manufacturer "violated the Clean Water Act" or has some controversial ingredient in it. It also offers any number of "higher rated" substitute products that more closely meet the app founder's standards.  Back then I tried it and then I wrote:

And then I realized it's just a matter of time before I'm going to learn if a company discriminates against gay people, or is a union buster, or has a CEO that denies climate change, or has a political action committee that gives only to Republicans, or has a slew of OSHA violations, or doesn't pay any taxes, or has another product that's being recalled - ALL AT THE POINT OF SALE.

The good news about Good Guide is the database is responsibly curated - while the owners of the database are of the west-coast, granola-crunchy variety, they are at least open to discussion with people from other points of view or agendas.

That's all changed.  Welcome to Buycott, the new wild west of social activism.

This is the app brands should have spent the past three years preparing to address.  It's the app that has the best chance to politicize purchasing decisions more than we've ever seen.   It's deep enough to offer tools that sophisticated activists want, like a corporate "family tree" that lets you identify corporate partners and parent companies. It's open enough to let users crowd-source the database and it's social enough to let people start or join causes and specific boycotts.  And it's audacious enough to get good press.

So now when mom walks into a store, she has an entire social movement or two on her phone.  And she has so much more data at her fingertips than just three years ago.  The advice I gave three years ago, however, still applies:

So there are a few things companies should be doing YESTERDAY to protect their reputations and their brands:

• Upgrade your social media monitoring efforts to see what's written about you in all these mobile-accessed databases. Good Guide is a start. Make sure the info is accurate. Contact them if it's not. 

• Build relationships with the folks who make these databases and these apps. Understand their motivation, work with them to make sure you're presented in the best possible light. 

• Partner with credible organizations to build your own databases and applications. Support some of these groups by underwriting some of the cost, providing technical support, and letting them know they can work with you. 

•  Promote responsible efforts to give consumers all the information they want and need to make smart decisions. Consumers reward the companies that advocate for them. 

Or, sit back and wonder why people stopped buying your stuff.

Now it's a bit harder to build those relationships, but at least we know where to look.