Jul
12

I’m Coming For You, Public Diplomacy!!!

 

Spider Jerusalem

Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan. Image by Darek_Smid via Flickr

Inspired by a recent reading of Warren Ellis‘ and Darick Robertson‘s exceptional sci-fi journalism epic Transmetropolitan, I’m going guns up on a number of communications issues affecting the communities through which I circulate in DC. Ellis’ self-described “outlaw journalist” Spider Jerusalem – fueled by copious amounts of drugs and madness in a delightful send-up of Hunter S. Thompson – promises his readership “The Truth. No matter what.” In his writing, Spider goes after all that is wrong with his beloved society, targeting everything from corrupt politicians to the public’s ignorance of special sub-cultures in their fine City. I find Spider’s epic story a galvanizing bullwhip across my back, forcing me off my Xbox-addled arse to write about some of the iniquities in government I see as part of my work. This will be just the first in a series of posts on subjects across the communications spectrum. I’m coming for ALL OF YOU.

Today, my first target is public diplomacy.

OMGWTF

Readers of this blog should not be surprised by my intense disappointment in the modern public diplomacy (or PD) community.  Today’s premeditated murder was spurred on by my attendance and yet another PD gathering in Washington, DC: a meeting of the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (ACPD). On the shores of our august capitol, PD enthusiasts, practitioners, and executives met to talk about the same retarded problems they have been since before the U.S. Information Agency‘s (aka the USIA) absorption by the State Department during the Clinton Administration. Panelists lamented continued lack of resources for PD initiatives, the imbalance between the State and Defense Departments in strategic communication capability, and a dilapidated piece of shitheel legislation called the Smith-Mundt Act whose Cold War roots strangle in the crib any offspring of modern government communication and engagement initiatives.

At issue for you oppressed, tax-fucked Americans? These same people have debated this same issue for a decade with no charted course for reform.

Hunter S. Thompson would have brain-smacked you all by now. Be thankful for my gonzo. Moo hoo ha ha. (Image from TopTenz.net. Comedy shamelessly ripped off of Warren Ellis.)

“That’s not fair!” some asshole will undoubtedly object, choking himself masturbatorially on reams of “DipNotes” from PD officers both home-based and overseas, begging our pardon thank you very much, “We have changed SO. MUCH. in the Obama Administration!” Let not these purported achievements fill you with comfort, dear seekers of AWESOME, for they elicit mere “yays” from the govvies roaming the halls of cavernous Main State and snickering derision from their interagency compatriots behind the green doors of MacDill and Bragg and Langley. Progress made under Judith McHale‘s reign as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs registers as little more than a cursory reshuffling of office space for most of the strategic communication community. Progress that scores an administration enough points for a minor electoral anecdote but changes nothing. In fact, Dame Judith hung her Mission Accomplished banner on July 1st and dashed back to the private sector, a political appointment weighing under her belt for new boardroom dances with wolves.

They define “progress” as anything more than what the last administration achieved. The politicization of public diplomacy continues. Even PD Jesus Bruce Gregory’s voice cracked with torpor as he queried the Commission about any indication of motivation amongst The Bastards of Capitol Hill to make revising legislation like Smith-Mundt a priority. No one could answer with anything but googly-eyed evasion and exhortations of more progress. All bullshit.

Key to these liver spotted deliberations is the disconcerting lack of any personage on the Commission the age of, it seems, 60? 50? 40? Said Commissioners are charged with advising the White House and Congress on the current state of PD and any required changes. Have these venerable veterans achieved any of these changes in the past? NO. Debates continue unabashed under their scrutiny, but ultimately, no capable young saviors have appeared to dash the fuckery of this decrepit profession into some semblance of modernization. Instead, more meetings. Many, many meetings.

Is PD even a necessary discipline in the 21st century? This existential question should be considered by this Commission and more. Panelists admitted that as communication becomes more social and content ownership franchises more to the individual… does a government agency have any equitable place in this modern communication continuum? How much of said agency’s budget could be repurposed into something more effective, especially in This, Our Decade of Economic Anal Probity?

In truth, some kind of coordinative communication apparatus is probably mandated, but a standalone office of diplomats still trying to get Teh Brown Peeples to read our press releases is not the answer. The profession of public diplomacy itself has even been attacked indirectly by the wild success of independent citizen diplomacy efforts. As much as foreign cultures balk at the elitist diplomacy practiced by our leaders, they clamor for more of US. OUR people. Our CITIZENS and THEIR culture. It is THIS influence, the kind Americans exude in their daily interactions with EVERYONE, that fosters our best destiny in achieving any kind of global equilibrium where U.S. interests and foreign policy objectives are met.

So. What to do?

Less bullshittery. More AWESOME.

We need not more reportage of the latest personnel changes in State PD to accommodate engagement with people of different cultures online. Instead, we need INSANE RISK TAKING. We need programs that make managers shit their pants. We need BOLDNESS. We need MADNESS. We need BETTER. Everyone lives in fear of breaking the law (i.e., Smith-Mundt), but no one has ever been prosecuted much less charged for it. COWBOY UP, PEOPLE.

Retire the old. Empower the new.

If PD is to survive, it needs to stop chasing off all its talent. Instead of rewarding the tired old Foreign Service Officers in their Cold War era suits with prime postings and political appointments, recruit badass social communicators and rockstars. Were I the President, I’d beg Jack Dorsey to fix my State Department. I’d heap tons of cash upon Katie Stanton and Jared Cohen to keep challenging the system instead of being chased off by white-faced, skeleton-eyed Statey lifers. It’s time for PD to evolve and kill its parents.

Flexible, dynamic interagency doctrine.

Christopher Paul, RAND analyst and a speaker at the ACPD meeting, noted voluminous mountains of reports all describing the same problems with the US government’s PD and strategic communication enterprise. All of them, he said, cited failures in strategy, leadership, and resources. While this is true, understand that they can only be fixed with doctrine– legislated, enforceable operating procedures that name the leader and give them authority, power, and dollars. Said doctrine should be written and executed dynamically and train its future communications professionals to a standard of dynamism instead of the usual tired old PD goals shat out by Foreign Service Institute instructors.

An organization… or not?

Since PD people love to retread the same issue over and over, the ACPD discussion inevitably turned toward the idea of a rehabilitated USIA of the future or some such public/private organization that could strategically execute funding for PD or strategic communication programs. If you think this is the solution to your PD problems, I refer you to the abortion that is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a case study in placenta cannibalization. Ultimately, we will not know if a new organization is needed until we agree upon one final yet primarily critical issue.

Communication is communication is communication.

In the ecosystem of government influence, we have public diplomacy. We have strategic communication. We have military information operations and its subordinate components. We have public affairs. We have countless different ways of describing the same thing, mainly because Our Bastardry In Office refuse to modernize legislation and policy to reflect the present day much less prepare for the ever-fluid yet super-AWESOME future. Instead of rewriting arcane definitions and arguing them over interagency turf, we need a frank and fundamental understanding by our entire government that all of these things are influence and communication is the mechanism by which we engage that influence, be it passively or actively, openly or surreptitiously. We need a pedigree for professionals charged to operate in this ecosystem and high qualifications for the ones assigned to advise senior leaders and decision makers.

Hope Is Not Lost

It sounds doomy and gloomy from the PD pulpit, doesn’t it? Well, here’s another lovely fact for you to chew on: NOBODY CARES. That’s right. Outside of DC, Americans could care less about a minuscule communication discipline practiced by a cadre of foggy eyed concerto directors and staffs of douchebags wielding postgraduate degrees from learning institutions designed to pump out partisanly political clones year after year.

Within this black hole of apathy lies opportunity. While no one is looking, those with the drive and the passion to make change – not ask for it – can turn the modernization of PD into an ecstasy fueled RAVE. The Executive Branch needs not the pusillanimous posturing of political poobahs on the Hill to create true strategic communication primacy in government right now. But to make permanent visionary change, we will eventually need to rustle Congress into the pasture of the future.

To achieve this, however, we need YOU – that’s right, YOU – to get up off your ass and MAKE THIS AN ISSUE. Every time you vote for the guy who likes to tweet dick pics to his mistresses, you screw us out of balanced, effective decisions. Stop sending immense wankers to DC.

Next Time On Strategic Communication Theater…

In subsequent posts, we’ll explore more about what this weird world of strategic communication and influence looks like from Washington. Many of you dear AWESOMESAUCERS have no idea what I’m talking about, and that’s part of the problem. So look for a series of “WTF…?” posts detailing simple explanations of complex processes, systems, and disciplines related to Our National Communication Nightmare.

The gloves come off.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Jul
06

IO Europe Wrap-up

Having been overtaken by events in London last week, I found it untenable to get out a daily blog post covering IQPC‘s Information Operations (or IO) Europe conference. There were also quite a few concerns from some conference-goers about how new media dorks like me attending could potentially bust up IO Europe’s tradition of “Chatham House rules” where none of the gathering’s discussions were attributable let alone reportable.

Wrestling with this personally, I’ve decided to go ahead and write up my thoughts on the conference because I believe the discussions are important to the wider global communications community. I will, however, decline to name some names to protect the guilty. ;)

That said, let’s see what’s new in another year of IO.

True Best Practices Are Usually the Most Controversial

From what conference-goers told me, this year more than ever saw more status quo-challenging presentations than ever before at IO Europe. The IO community, being as small as it is, tends to attack points of view that make these challenges. IO being a military discipline tends to rely on structure, plans, and doctrine that do not evolve. This runs counter to the promise of the Now Media Age (with apologies to MountainRunner) where we see communication innovation happening every day. And before people rail against that assertion claiming that our most popular conflict environments are in traditional media dependent regions, we also saw plenty of controversy that had nothing to do with the internet. Ed O’Connell – late of the Alternative Strategies Institute, which has now been acquired by Blue Hackle – gave a rousing talk about how he has conducted “interventions” into historically denied areas. The influence effects of Ed’s work dealt with providing forums for locals to air grievances in ways they had not considered before.

Ed’s a controversial figure in the IO world. He’s rankled quite a few feathers but his effects are undeniable. He is a fearless believer in personal, face-to-face rehabilitation of societies that have been brutalized by everything from violence and terror to poor economies. As much as we would like to put a new media solution on everything, there is still need for the de-radicalization work of someone like Ed.

Image courtesy Science 2.0

Most IO Pros Fear the Internet

Despite traditional approaches being successful and warranted in our current conflict environments, most of the IO pros I ran into at IO Europe are still massively afraid of conducting operations on the internet. While we have seen a huge ramp-up of media monitoring and analytical capabilities (i.e., programs that scour the internet for operationally relevant information and intelligence), very few organizations are actually doing anything with the information gleaned. Most arguments in favor of this fear have to do with limited policy and legislation governing influence operations on the internet but in my conversations with people, I detected a marked lack of motivation to even understand the online world. Many used excuses like “I’m too old to get it” or “My boss doesn’t care about this.” Worse, we even had a cybersecurity exercise one day lead by a facilitator who claimed to care nothing about social media and still professed to be an expert in online security operations.

IO Policy Still Stuck in the Dark Ages

Such fearmongering is exacerbated by onerous IO and strategic communication policy. There were more discussions on what simple terms mean than I could count, and when you factor in the international perspectives from the US, NATO, the UK, Canada, and many other nationalities represented, doctrinal debates became comical. Because of these debates, IO policy (and its overriding legislation) is still clawing for relevancy in an information age that has already left it behind. While professed IO policymakers and “experts” continually disagree over the meaning of “strategic communications,” citizens are moving on to the next platform, the next online game, the next social network, the next INNOVATION.

This facet of IO Europe upset me a little because this was one of the reasons I got out of the government business a while back. One of my former bosses used to say that government is about maintaining the status quo NOT innovation. Because of that, we will never see an IO or influence organization that thinks and operates ahead of the curve.

That Doesn’t Mean Innovation Isn’t Happening Though…

Quite a few private sector companies talked about communication systems monitoring platforms and methodologies. As we all know, entrepreneurial creativity occurs in the private sector. I met a number of companies who claimed to have technical solutions that provided end-to-end monitoring and sentiment analysis capabilities in multiple languages. Unfortunately, none of them were on hand to demo, something I would challenge all of them to rectify next year. IO Europe could be a great conference if IO pros could cycle from table to table to see the latest innovations in online data analysis.

Aside from tools, there were some great case studies of innovative approaches to operations. Hats off to the gents from Bell Pottinger for a supercool study of their strategic communications work in the Horn of Africa.

For Every Jerk You Meet, There Are 10 AWESOME Mofos

The IO community has its share of smarmy turd biscuits slinking through events like IO Europe, whether they’re government reps or otherwise. However, there are just as many, if not more AWESOME people hanging around with amazing stories, conversation, and things from which you can learn. I made twice as many friends at this IO Europe than I did last year, and these are folks with whom I anticipate having lasting professional friendships as well. The value of so many international perspectives in one place is hard to calculate, but may of the non-Americans at the conference gave me tons of new things to think about. I especially have to thank the gents from M&C Saatchi who recruited me to speak, offered some great conversations about music, and – in one case – hosted me at their home for my last day in country.

Final Thoughts: Be Better, Do Good

Ultimately, IO Europe was a great annual get-together for those of us in the community, but I think we can all do better. Too many of us got wrapped up in our own organizational prejudices, focusing on selling something or satisfying a government requirement. Instead, I think we all need to take a step back and remember why we’re in the influence business. For me, it’s all about experiential sharing – the process of understanding the complex global ecosystem in which we live that is made manifest by online means. At the end of the day though, all of us need to recognize a passion for communication, whether we’re a NATO PAO or a PR firm VP. There are too many people in this business who are just punching a clock, and that’s a shitty way to communicate with other cultures even if all you’re doing is approving comms plans.

See y’all next year.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Jun
10

Links of the Week: June 10, 2011 Edition

Been a while since I’ve stunk up your linkses. Lots popping in the world of AWESOME. Let’s see what’s up.

Welcome to the Glee Lantern Corps

I hate Glee. I love Green Lantern. Makes for an interesting mix.

10 innovative digital books you should know about

I haven’t audited every one of the digital books Peter Meyers lists here, but there are some fairly AWESOME looking concepts. I really think tablets are the future of transmedia storytelling and that the book experience needs to be redefined for them. There’s an incredible app listed here from the New York Public Library that’s downloadable for the iPad: every photo and article they have from the 1939 World’s Fair, which is an AMAZING experience on the iPad.

U.N. Report Declares Internet Access a Human Right

I don’t think people realize how huge the implications for this are. The U.N. is basically saying a human’s access to the unrestricted information on the Internet is equal to that same human’s right to be free. In the wake of the Arab Spring, this sets up immense shifts in the ubiquity of the global Internet, perhaps even paving the road for the persistent integration of web connectivity to human biology. This is a big moment that will appear on historical timelines decades from now.

ComicsAlliance Recaps The ‘Smallville’ Series Finale

I make no secrets about my loathing of Smallville, a television show that could have presented a thoughtful yet entertaining mainstream exploration of Clark Kent’s pre-Superman life to a wholly new audience. Instead, the show featured cheesy “re-imaginings” of classic Superman comic book stories, horrible dialogue and characters, and outright disrespect of everything that makes Superman special. And yet, it ran for ten fucking years. What insipid assholes actually thought this was a good show??? In any case, Smallville’s series finale retained the degree of silly ridiculosity established in the 10 years prior with everything from killer planets to Tom Welling never actually putting on the Superman suit. Chris Sims and David Uzumeri at Comics Alliance continue their horrified deconstruction of this television travesty in the wit-filled mockfest that any Smallville review deserves. Definitely one for laughs.

There’s Something Happening Here…

Futurist Venessa Miemis tipped me off to this dark, dark vision of the future, where the optimism of our modern social and technological advances is crushed by the realities of today’s economic and political downfalls. Dave Pollard, writer of the blog How to Save the World, presents an extremely well-researched and sourced assessment of the current state of the world and how he thinks we are all on an inevitable downslide into hopelessness and decay. Pollard notes several observations of evidence for this assessment that make a lot of sense despite my own personal hopes for a better world in the future. It’s a frightening punch to the gut that everyone should check out and comment on. This is our world we’re trying to save here, people.

Bleeding Cool’s Coverage of DC Comics’ Relaunch Announcements

Last week, I wrote about DC Comics’ ballsy move of relaunching its entire line of comics with new #1 issues and publishing them digitally on the same day they see print. This week, DC has slowly rolled out announcements of new creative teams and directions for their 52 new titles in September. The content is not as impressive as originally thought. Initially, this was presented as an opportunity to recast its universe into a more modern, future-looking and diverse playground for new audiences to discover. Unfortunately, the selection of creative teams for some of these titles is backward-looking, in my opinion. The Batman titles, for example, feature the exact same creative teams as they do now, just mixed up a little bit. They also include two titles written by artists who have since been unable to get their books out on time. I’m not sure how revolutionary this is going to be for modern audiences.

DC's rebooted TEEN TITANS #1 by Scott Lobdell and Brett Booth.

There are some positive indications, however. DC is taking this opportunity to indeed ratchet up the diversity factor in their books. We’re seeing more women, more heroes of color, and more international representation amongst team books. It also looks like a design edict has come down the pike from DC Editorial to ensure women’s costumes are much more appropriate for modern audiences, as opposed to the pervert suits we’re all used to. I think these are all positive steps toward modernizing the DCU for maximum appeal to that key young demographic that has proven so elusive to them over the past 20 years. I’m most intrigued by the inclusion of a brand new title featuring Batwing, the Batman of Africa:

 

BATWING #1 by Judd Winick and Ben Oliver.

Although, I would have been much more impressed in DC’s attempts to diversify their lineup had they given an ongoing title to the Muslim Batman of Paris:

 

Nightrunner – the Batman of Paris! He’s a Muslim, y’all!

 

Get clickin’, y’all!

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Mar
02

Conversations at American University: The Double Facepalm

I had a great time last week talking with my buddy Dr. Craig Hayden in his Public Diplomacy class at American University in DC. Craig and I are sometimes-partners-in-crime at the MountainRunner Institute (along with His AWESOMEness, Matt Armstrong, and “Georgia Peach” Shawn Powers). We have a lot of interesting discussions about public diplomacy, strategic communication, and the nature of information and influence in today’s post-digital world.

Craig asked me to bring my perspective on those discussions to his class. We managed to film parts of the conversation, so I’m going to be chopping them up into bite-sized morsels of BADASS AWESOME for you, my loving public, to digest. In the first of these videos (all of which will be hosted here on my YouTube channel as well), Craig asks why I chose the metaphor of the “double facepalm” in last week’s introductory blog post about my experiences in public diplomacy and government. (Larger, HD versions of the video are available via the YouTube link.)

I’d like to give a great big THANK YOU to all the AU students I met during this discussion. It’s really heartening to me to see so many potential citizen diplomat rockstars in this soul-sucking town. Great talking with you, and I hope we can continue the conversation outside the classroom.

Speaking of which: I know a lot of you are blogging as part of Craig’s class and on your own. Please be sure to call yourselves out in the comments section of these video posts. I’d really like to promote some of the student-led commentary I’ve seen since the in-class discussion. We build our audiences socially, so I’d love to feature some of your opinions and content on Must. Be. AWESOME!!! dot com.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Feb
23

Public Diplomacy for AWESOME People… the Du4 Way!

I am extremely honored that Dr. Craig Hayden has invited me to speak to his public diplomacy class at American University Thursday evening this week. I met Craig through shared colleagues at the MountainRunner Institute, and we have since collaborated on a number of things. He’s a great dude, loves beer, and I thought it would be cool to throw up a landing post for me, him, his class, and anyone else who gets PO’d by the sure-to-incense incendiary fire that will come burbling out of my Macallan-addled lips Thursday night.

I have a love-hate relationship with public diplomacy. Coming from a background in the Department of Defense, I did not understand the peculiar delineation between PD and other forms of government communication and influence until my own graduate work at Johns Hopkins. Upon discovering the very simple definition that PD involves a government’s communications directly to foreign governments’ citizens (and thus bypassing that foreign government), I became instantly enamored of the idea. After all, in DOD, when you “communicate” with a foreign population, you’re usually dropping a bunch of comic strips from the sky written so badly that the recipients think all Americans really are retarded.

My work generally involved finding ways to improve the U.S. government’s communication capability, be it PD, public affairs, IO/PSYOP, or other means. One of my mentors, the late Jeffrey B. Jones, called all of these disciplines strategic communication, a term that has since entered the DOD lexicon and gone on to confuse and infuriate virtually everyone else in government. If DOD does one thing well, it defines its doctrine exhaustively, and an integrated communication and influence doctrine is something our government has needed for a long time. I became a fan of Jeff’s definition from the get-go, and I proceeded to execute my work under such a fashion.

This is how it feels like working in public diplomacy EVERY DAY.

How does this affect public diplomacy? Well, aside from all the other problems in the U.S. national security apparatus, PD practitioners have been almost historically kicked in the ass by said interagency apparatus. Since the U.S. Information Agency – the premier public diplomacy institution of the Cold War – was folded up into the State Department by the Clinton Administration, PD has been regarded as a largely unnecessary, unneeded career field.

However, some of the brightest information warriors I have ever met have come from PD backgrounds. Some still serve the State Department. But they are a dying breed, and State is not adapting fast enough to the 21st century to train, educate, and deploy PD officers of the future. Many communication and diplomacy experts have even called for the dissolution of the public diplomacy career field, arguing that others do it better in today’s day and age.

I come down on this issue very simply: communication is influence. Period. Call it public diplomacy. Call it public affairs. Call it public relations. Call it fuck all, I don’t care. It’s all the same shit and these penny-ante fights government gets into over who owns influence planning and execution are mere dick measuring exercises to protect budgets and retain standing within our own ranks. If any of us PD “professionals” had a whit about us, we would (re)read Unrestricted Warfare by Senior Col Qiao Liang and Senior Col Wang Xiangsui and understand that global communication, global influence, requires the strategic, national integration of ALL government branches and agencies and their communications initiatives. It requires, to borrow an analogy, for America to conduct herself as a composer would an orchestra, creating multitudes of musical movements that all combine into one big, beautiful symphony.

If you’re a student in Craig’s class, drop me a line in the comments. Send questions, concerns, or even challenges, and I promise to answer them to the best of my ability in class on Thursday.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Jan
13

So Far, Digital Comics Are Not AWESOME

I have some fundamental problems with the way comics publishers are approaching their digital publication strategies. Marvel and DC – the two biggest publishers on the block – seem to be the most egregious trespassers against the simple 2.0 adage of “Everything: anytime, anywhere.” Here then follows a discussion of some of the ins and outs of the issue.

The Instant Catalogue

The thing that bugs me the most about how The Big Two have handled their digital offerings involves the massive back catalogue both companies possess. I should be able to download Paul Levitz‘s entire original run on Legion of Super-Heroes at a reasonable price. Currently, virtually all digital comics run about $1.99 and day-and-date releases can cost up to $3.99 depending on the publisher. With so much available content in their vaults, comics publishers can EASILY adapt whole swaths of comics runs for mere pennies in overhead.

Image courtesy Comics Alliance

Instead, what we’ve been seeing so far are limited runs or storylines from popular comics that get offered in digital stores and are sometimes taken away after a period of time. There are so many comics runs that I would pay for to have digitally on my iPad, but I’m leery of the cost… especially if they’re only available for limited amounts of time and there exists the possibility that the publisher may offer those comics again at discounted bundles.

The bottom line comes down to ABUNDANCE: there are so many comics available, why not sell them ALL digitally? I know there are obvious business reasons for this, and we’ll get into those in moment. But for a fan and reader – someone who is going to spend their scratch on comics – to not offer these extensive catalogues digitally and at reasonable prices is simply retarded.

Price & “Bundling”

Traditionally, comics are sold at a per issue price and then discounted for graphic novel or trade paperback collections. This has become the common practice in the comics business particularly because publishers make more money off trade collections (which can be reprinted) that are sold in traditional bookstores (versus scary comics shops). This has created two separate classes of comics readers: the periodical reader who buys issues as they come out, and the “wait-for-the-trade” reader who wants to read an entire serialized story in one volume.

Digital stores can go either way here. Dark Horse Comics – which will launch its own online comics store very soon – is actually undercutting other comics publishers by offering individual issues of their comics for $1.49 and larger discounts for “bundles,” which will contain multiple issues comprising a full storyline. Dark Horse has also been experimenting with releasing graphic novels and trade collections as separate apps in the iPad store at prices much lower than their print counterparts.

Image courtesy myappworld.com

Dark Horse’s example provides the best look at how well this digital comics economy can work. At the end of the day, there is NO REASON why digital comics should cost as much as their print versions. The overhead has already been spent (aside for some small costs in adapting the print version to digital readers), so it’s almost pure profit, which gets split between the company and the creators (and Apple). Dark Horse’s comics become a much more attractive buying option for those readers who are looking for affordable ways to get into comics, stories, and characters.

I still believe these prices are overinflated (music costs $0.99 generally), but I also understand that the economics of the comics business are such that some compromises have to be made. We’ll get more into that later.

The Direct Market

The comics industry pivots on the direct market, which is best defined as comics specialty retailers who preorder, stock, and sell comics out of their own stores. Beginning in the 1980s, the comics direct market sprung up to replace newsstand publication as the primary source of sales for all comics publishers. As such, comics publishers court comics retailers because that’s been their primary method of sales.

Digital comics changes all of this. The third party between me and the comics I love switches from the high-touch retailer to the virtual comics store app like ComiXology and the platform on which I’ll read them (i.e., Apple). This has created a huge uproar in the retailer community, which cannot compete with the prices digital comics can promise to readers. Some retailers offer discounts off regular subscriber orders, but digital essentially kills further instances of the walk-in customer, which has been on the decline anyway for years. Because of the relationship comics publishers want to maintain with their retailer industry, I can understand how it’s important for them to price comics similarly to what they charge in the direct market… so as not to shoot retailers in the back.

However, I believe digital comics is a needed wake-up call to retailers. Look up your nearest comics store and go visit. It’s not very pretty, is it? Usually, it’s a dark, scary hole in the wall run by swarthy longhairs in white-stained T-shirts full of unkempt pop culture product that may or not include statues of anime babes getting tentacle raped. There are exceptions to this perception of comics retailers: James Sime’s excellent Isotope in San Francisco, for example, is designed as a lounge instead of merely a comics store. But for the most part, comics retailers are the same subhuman basement-dwelling nerds they’ve always been. If digital comics don’t force them out of business, then maybe they will force them to at least take a shower and start selling comics as respectable professionals. Speaking as the former manager of a comics store myself, I can tell you that this is a kick in the pants the direct market industry sorely needs. Otherwise, they deserve to close their doors.

Periodical Versus Collected Reading

The great thing about digital comics is that you can have your cake and eat it too. Love a series so much you HAVE to get the latest issue on the day it comes out? BOOM. Buy it at full price from the digital store. Want to wait instead to read that comic when it’s been collected into a larger storyline? BOOM. Buy it as a discounted collection. This is possible RIGHT NOW. It just takes comics publishers having th balls to do it instead of catering to their direct market fanwanks.

One of the greatest examples of this is Robert Kirkman‘s AWESOME zombie epic The Walking Dead. Through its own iPad app, Kirkman sells every issue of this comics series for $1.99 and $2.99 for brand new issues that are available on the same day as their print release. Furthermore, he offers collected editions that contain full storylines at $9.99. I still think this is too expensive, but the availability of the comic and the options Kirkman gives readers is what’s important. He GETS that the more options he can give his fans to consume the content – and the more barriers he can lower to new fans’ entry – will result in more downloads and more access.

Stupid Sales Tricks: The Perception of Scarcity

Probably the worst, most offensive sales tactic the big comics publishers have tried out with digital comics involves the perception of scarcity. Marvel, for example, has developed a “Vault” in which they’ll place digital comics after making them available for a short period of time. Similar to what Disney does with its home video releases, this creates a false sense of scarcity– “If I don’t buy Daredevil #24 before February 1st, it’ll be gone forever!”

This tactic completely defeats the purpose of Long Tail-inspired digital product sales and marketing. It does nothing but demonstrate that the comics publishers do not understand digital content at all. NOBODY owns the comics you download from an app or a digital comics store. They are merely CONTENT one CONSUMES. Scarcity and value only have meaning in a physical world where only so many copies of a given comic are available and must then be traded at prices determined by the collector market. To try and engineer this system within digital comics stores is flat-out wrong and stupid.

The worst offender of this tactic lately has been DC Comics, who made a huge to-do about all the great new digital comics offerings they were going to sell via their online stores. Sure enough, they released initial runs of some very popular older comics like Preacher and Transmetropolitan. Go look for those comics now. They’re gone. With nary an announcement or a discussion, DC simply pulled them from their digital stores. So now, the next time they decide to put them up, there will probably be a run on digital sales as digital consumers rush to get these titles before they’re taken away again.

This is terrible, offensive practice that needs to come to an end immediately.

Image courtesy 148apps.com

So What’s Next?

The good news is that digital comics are still in their infancy and have a lot of room to evolve. I think within the next year, we’ll see a drop in prices for most digital comics. Within 2 years, we’ll see more innovation in terms of bundled or collected editions. DC or Marvel will probably release an entire title’s run as an experiment at some point, possibly at a high price point or as a separate app to determine how well something like that would sell. While this happens, smaller comics publishers and independent comics creators will beat the big guys to the punch by releasing their comics at the same time as print editions and even exclusively online.

For my money, here are a couple comics publishers that I think are doing it RIGHT:

  • Dark Horse currently offers some Frank Miller graphic novels (Sin City, 300) and a Serenity collection as inexpensive iPad apps.
  • IDW has separate apps for many of its licensed titles (e.g. Transformers, G.I. Joe) and is beginning to offer original graphic novels as apps (e.g., Darwyn Cooke’s Parker adaptations The Hunter and The Outfit).
  • Boom! Comics, while not quite day-and-date yet, are beginning to offer more and more of their comics close to publication date.

Got any good digital comics recommendations? Send ‘em to me in the comments section!

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Aug
23

Why NOT You?

The thing I love about the modern day is how goddamn EASY it is to do whatever you want to, whenever you want, however you see fit. Feel like creating an internet empire on the back of your G.I. Joe doll collection? Go to it. Found some out-there idea no one else has and want to gas-pedal that thing into notoriety? Make it happen.

List of Scott Pilgrim characters
Image via Wikipedia

What seems like a million times a day, people complain about reasons NOT to do something. This is the very definition of LAME. They give endless excuses on why they’re not qualified, how they don’t have time, how they’re not well-connected, on and on, ad nauseum.

You think just because somebody else did something AWESOME that you CAN’T? I say fuck that shit, man. Stop saying, “Why THEM?”

WHY NOT YOU?

Within the last thirty days, I have closed an immense deal for my consultancy, traded sellable ideas with a television creator, booked travel to five different places I never thought I’d visit, gotten elected to the boards of two august institutions, and made personal contact with one of my own internet heroes. I did all this because I said, “Why the fuck WOULDN’T I do this???” I made it happen. I didn’t prevaricate, commiserate, or otherwise masturbate about how and why things couldn’t work out. I Scott Pilgrim‘d my way into some great things. That’s a lot of “I’s” but these are just examples of an attitude change I made early on this year that’s paying craploads of dividends now.

Why not you, too?

Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta
Mar
16

The Courtesy of a Reach-around

A wrench got thrown into my Gov 2.0 Expo preso planning while I was picking myself up a bride Down South. It actually made me question whether I wanted to go through with it at all. However, after some hard thinking, I’m putting on the smiley face and taking my cheek-splitters like a man.

Let me explain.

The Gov 2.0 organizers contacted me about my presentation, “Instituting a Culture of AWESOME in Government: The Case of the IED Task Force Tech Team,” a couple weeks ago. They told me that they were altering the format of the conference and that my presentation was being shortened from the originally proposed 50 minutes to FIVE minutes. Apparently, they thought it would be so much cooler if they bunched in a ton of 5 minute “rapid fire” presos around the keynote address. There were a lot of platitudes about how great my proposal was and how AWESOME it would be condensed to 5 minutes.

How do you “condense” a case study, which by definition is the result of an analysis? It’s like saying, “Hey, dude, I love your book! Can you give me a pamphlet version?” Considering how much effort I’ve already put into researching this topic, a FIVE MINUTE presentation does the material – especially this material – a disservice.

I wrote the organizers back expressing my discontent but also offering an alternative: how about I come up with something else related to creating AWESOME culture in government that I could adequately fit in the time limit? Apparently, the organizers really wanted the IED Task Force Tech Team case study but felt it wasn’t topical enough to warrant a full panel. They adamantly demanded I present the same topic as originally proposed. Basically, do it or hit the road, jack.

Now this all sounds like inside baseball and dirty laundry, but I’m recounting it to demonstrate something. Despite the sheer shittiness of the situation, it forced me to sit down and think hard about what I was being asked to do. Is it worth taking a stand against this tomfoolery? Should I risk standing behind my material if it means getting kicked off the ticket? Is it even possible to give a good presentation on my original topic under these new circumstances? Am I betraying my AWESOME if I cave to these new demands? In this case, can you still be AWESOME living on a compromise?

At the end of the day, I accepted… and here’s why:

  • I can’t trade the exposure I’ll get at this conference at this stage of my career.
  • It will be an even more challenging exercise boiling my preso down to something entertaining and valuable.
  • I think I can still deliver an AWESOME preso.
  • Who knows what I can get away with on the day of?

Don’t be mistaken though: I’m not compromising on this. I’m acceding to the organizers’ demands. I think that’s an important distinction.

All that said, though, I’m still gonna fucking ROCK this expo. Fifty minutes, five minutes, whatever. It’s just less time into which I gotta pack a more concentrated dose of AWESOME.

So bring a spare pair of panties– IT’S ON.

Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta
Feb
03

When Your Clients Are Not AWESOME

Within my community of business owners, contract wranglers, and salespeople in DC, I’ve seen a lot of long faces lately. Since the economy crashed and the new administration took office, business development people have had a harder and harder time selling their wares to federal clients and closing new contracts. Most of what the government does award these days often looks a lot like continuation rollovers, wherein some asshole COTR (that’s contracting officer’s technical representative for you neophytes) finds it easier to perform minimal competition compliance just to ensure he or she doesn’t have to deal with the added headache of transitioning between incumbent contractors and new winners.

Despite the reasons for the recent slowdown in federal business, the bottom line is that many companies are finding it harder and harder to deal with their onetime great clients. Contracting officers (COs) and COTRs have become outright hostile to some companies, turning required program management into offensive, often farcical dehumanization of the performer(s). Folks I work with vent often and loudly about how the typical government contracting churn in Washington has gotten even worse.

Also, as hard as it’s become to acquire a contract nowadays, there’s developed the added insanity of dealing with a growing crop of dickheaded contract administrators. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard from businesspeople in DC complaining about how unmovable, boorish, and downright inappropriate some government agencies can act towards their performers. Some government officials who administrate such contracts blatantly tell their contractors that part of the gig is to take shit from them, from simple incompetent management on down to the most revolting of behaviors toward gender and racial lines. There seems to be this attitude that, goddammit, the government knows best and since I’m the government’s representative on this contract, you better listen to me. This behavior is not just unprofessional, it’s insulting, repulsive, and deserving of public punishment.

This situation – Our Great Client Crisis – is not new and is not AWESOME. In fact, it’s pretty fucking lame.

I have one piece of advice for these folks, and it’s advice that’s applicable to any business, company, consultancy, or individual:

If your client treats you like shit, then kick ‘em to the curb.

Subjecting oneself, one’s company, and one’s people to abusive treatment by a client just because they’re paying you money is ridiculous. Despite how many millions of dollars you’re making or could stand to make, it is simply not worth the emotional loss your business will take when scads of your people begin feeling The Mighty Fed in their poop chutes. Furthermore, the added frustration of trying to secure such work from people who may be willing to pay for your service but not understand it (“Let’s get some social media on this advertising plan!”) will only serve to waste more of your time that could be better spent with AWESOME clients.

Image courtesy of She's Unapologetic.com

So, if you’re in such an abusive relationship, what can YOU do about it? Here are a couple ideas that may help:

  • Call ‘em on it: The next time one of your clients purposely demeans you in public, call ‘em out on it. Publicly. Federal workers particularly are often not willing to duel over degrees of impropriety in public. Making the behavior public will often cause them to back down. That said, be ready for the dick move of having your contract terminated for no reason afterwards.
  • Make ‘em smarter: In a lot of cases, your clients aren’t acting like assholes because they want to. They just don’t know any better. So defuse the situation by offering to help them out. Tell them about other clients you’ve had who have expressed the same educational roadblocks in whatever specialty you happen to deal. You may even make a friend out of them. And friends give friends work in the future.
  • Call Fraud, Waste & Abuse: Each government agency has a hotline set up to report instances of fraud, waste and abuse amongst its employees. Use it. It may take time for your complaint to get addressed, so be prepared to go on the record, which can speed things up. Google your department of choice and be sure you’re calling a number at a high enough level that it warrants attention from that agency’s Inspector General.
  • Lodge a protest: Federal contractors in particular have clauses in their contracts providing for their right to raise protest against their COTRs for impropriety. Exercise this with caution however: these protests go in your company’s permanent record and may taint evaluators’ opinions of you during future competitions.
  • Find new clients: This is my favorite suggestion. You don’t like who you’re doing business with? Get out. Get out and find some dudes you DO like. If this requires you retooling your corporate offerings or marketing, then maybe you should take a hard look at your business and decide what market you really want to play in. Stop being a slave to million dollar contracts. Trust me: the payoff is not worth the stress and abuse you’ll take over the life of the contract if your client is an asshole.
Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta
Dec
11

The Comcast Experience

(Preface: I’ve been wrestling with whether I should use Must.Be.AWESOME!!! as a venue to write about my experiences, opinions, and encounters with any one of the thousands of consumer brands with which I come into contact. Ultimately, I’ve decided to write about only the ones that display some sense of AWESOME about them and not abuse this blog as a platform for complaining. Whatever the subject, we’ll call this The Experience Series.)

Everyone I know has had some kind of problem with Comcast Cable in the past. Be it service interruptions, poor internet speeds, limited channel selection, or crappy equipment, Comcast is like the AT&T of television and internet providers. My own poor experiences with their customer and technician services date back to 2004, but this post will focus on my most recent encounter with them, which was also my first exposure to their @Comcastcares Team.

Image courtesy of Crown Heights.info

Image courtesy of Crown Heights.info

I’ve been getting gang raped on my Comcast bill for years. There’s a very specific menu of services I want from them, often which don’t correspond to any of their packages. HDTV is important, fast internet is important, but home phone service I could care less about. In fact, if my condo association allowed satellite dishes, I would have already transferred over to one of the digital satellite companies because of their wider offering of HDTV programming. I am, unfortunately, stuck with Comcast.

This makes me an easy customer to forget about. My options for gravitating toward the competition are limited, especially since Verizon’s FiOS hasn’t been extended to my neighborhood. Comcast essentially has me in a stranglehold, so why should they waste valuable customer service time placating me?

This time, I decided to air my concerns over Twitter to @comcastcares, Comcast’s realtime Twitter customer service handle. Much has been written about Frank Eliason’s success in satisfying Comcast customers via Twitter, so I won’t rehash. Suffice to say, Frank has a whole digital outreach team now that monitors Twitter for any mention of Comcast. Where they find users complaining, their instant answer is, “Can I help?”

The instant gratification of this attention is great. One of the team members replied to me pretty quickly. I explained my dissatisfaction and described what I would ideally like to receive. The conversation moved from Twitter to email where the team member indicated she would like to get more details and then engage other Comcast people to figure out what they could do for me. This all sounded reasonable to me, and I loved the interaction.

However, interaction dost not make satisfaction. The team member who had taken my issue never responded back to me. After a week with no contact, I prodded her to remind her. Nothing. Frustration level: elevated. So I took back to Twitter and blasted out another series of tweets describing how @comcastcares abandoned me… just like Comcast’s usual phone-based customer service. This time, I got replies from two different digital outreach team members. I had to re-explain my situation and forward the email trail to these new folks.

Within a day, I got a phone call from a customer service rep named Lisa who then connected me with another rep in my area. (This was the first inclination to me that there may be a disconnect between their corporate offices, where @comcastcares sits, and regional offices, where accounts are managed and technicians dispatched. More on that later.) Lisa, as it became apparent to me, had been assigned as the “case manager” for my issues.

My local rep, Darcy, was supercool. Darcy examined my account, saw how I was indeed spending way too much money, and made several fixes that would save me about $50 a month on my bill. Furthermore, she arranged for a technician to come out to replace my aging wireless internet setup with a faster one, and even credited my account for a couple free movies. THAT was AWESOME customer service. I only had to wait for the technician to arrive a few days later.

Here’s where it got real frustrating, and this part serves to really illustrate the critical disconnect between Comcast Corporate and Comcast Regional Office Wherever. First off, the technician called me at the end of the three-hour window in which I was to have waited for him and told me (in the worst broken English I’ve ever heard) that he didn’t have any of the equipment he needed to upgrade my home setup and that I would have to call Darcy back and schedule another setup time. This was completely unsatisfactory, demonstrative of Old Comcast that didn’t give a shit about its customers and employed Lazy Assholes.

I called Darcy and Lisa back. More phone calls were made. Broken English Tech called me back saying he would actually get off his ass and go get the required piece of equipment from his office and come back later in the day. Thanks, buddy. You’re a class act. Lisa promised to call me back later and check to make sure everything was fine.

Broken English Tech arrived at my home and immediately set to his mission of showing me how inept he was at his job. After connecting the new device to my modem, he could not figure out why the interwebz wouldn’t come on and proceeded to call someone at his home office to literally walk him through how to fix the problem. Once he was finished, I asked him if he would help me connect what was supposed to be a new wireless router to my laptop.

Take a breath. It gets RETARDED after this.

Broken English Tech informs me that this new piece of equipment isn’t a wireless router. I ask him why I would want another router that does nothing beneficial to my connection at all and forgo all of the wireless networking I have set up in my home. His answer to this is to call his boss and receive top cover for telling me I was shit out of luck, buddy. Call your local Comcast customer service rep.

Image courtesy of The Contrarian

Image courtesy of The Contrarian

I am barely containing my fury at this point in time. I have internet but no wireless networking, so now my fiancee and I can’t work from home at the same time. Thanks, Comcast. Lisa calls me back to see how the installation went. I give her a double barrel shotgun blast full of ARGH. There’s just no excuse for this kind of idiocy, and I have to reschedule with Darcy again to have a technician come out and re-install the wireless router.

The next day, as I’m contemplating whether I’ll tweet about my Comcast experience, I realize my internet connection on my desktop has stalled out completely. The lights are on but nobody’s home. Cue one metric assload of Twitter-induced fury. Frank Eliason himself picks up my angry tweets this time and manages to remotely activate everything so that I’ve at least got some connection. If he could do all that remotely… why the hell do I need an incompetent technician to come into my home and push a couple wires together?

A second technician appears the next day, this one much more understandable, affable, and competent. He installs the new router. He does some courtesy tests on my connections, TV and internet, to make sure everything’s working properly. He helps me set up the wireless networks on all my peripherals. It’s all good in the neighborhood this time.

Now I have three separate devices taking up space in my office: the cable / phone modem, a wireless “booster” (which has no real appreciable speed increases over my old equipment), and a wireless router. It looks like the prop department from The Matrix downstairs.

After all is said and done, Lisa and the corporate Comcast customer service peeps are all in agreement that the level of service I received was unacceptable. The most telling facet of this whole experience is how shitty local customer service can totally destroy any positive virtual customer service. I appreciated their acknowledgement of that fact. I also appreciated Lisa and Darcy making personal phone calls on their own time to check up on me and make sure everything had been straightened out. While there’s only so much someone can do from behind a phone, those two really made me feel like I was being taken care of.

Here to help Comcast with future customer service upgrades, I offer a simple breakdown of the highs and lows of this, My Comcast Experience:

The Good

  • Quick, timely communication from the customer service reps
  • Reps genuinely wanted to make things better
  • Reps had authority to credit accounts
  • Technician #2 was friendly, competent and effective

The Bad

  • Long wait time behind initial request for help
  • Technician #1 incompetence
  • Technician #1 laziness
  • Technician #1 unable to communicate effectively
  • Services not fixed to standard
  • No technical follow-up to ensure everything’s working properly
  • Obvious gap between corporate and local customer service
  • Comcast equipment is still not high end

More on Comcast: