Bon's Mots

Forgive me. It’s been two months since my last post. My men­tal en­er­gies have been de­voted to school, school, school. Now that the worst is over, I can re­turn to my musings.

Here are some from the past few weeks:

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I at­tended an IABC sem­i­nar a few weeks ago (All-Star Social Media). Shel Holtz gave a great pre­sen­ta­tion on the communicator’s lead­er­ship role in in­te­grat­ing so­cial me­dia tools into their com­mu­ni­ca­tions plans.

I spoke to a for­mer col­league af­ter­wards who re­mains un­con­vinced about so­cial me­dia. And he’s not alone. There are a few hold­outs in my class, my fam­ily. And these are the very same peo­ple who have Facebook ac­counts. The irony alone kills me.

I’ve been privy to both sides of the ar­gu­ment. On the one end, you have the “so­cial me­dia as a fad” fac­tion; on the other lies the ra­bid so­cial me­dia jug­ger­naut. I plant my­self some­where in the mid­dle, and here’s why:

Social me­dia is not for every­body. Communicators should not jump in and ac­quire so­cial me­dia tools with­out some intelligence-gathering be­fore­hand. Find out how your au­di­ence likes to re­ceive your news. A pub­licly traded com­pany may have a more con­ser­v­a­tive au­di­ence in their in­vestors and should keep to the tried-and-true meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion (eg. newswire, mail­ings, e-mail dis­tri­b­u­tion). There are also reg­u­la­tions sur­round­ing the dis­sem­i­na­tion of ma­te­r­ial news; there must be some level of con­trol so it is best to tread wisely in this area.

Use the force wisely. The road to so­cial me­dia is lit­tered with com­pa­nies who have at­tempted to reach out to their au­di­ences us­ing so­cial me­dia and failed mis­er­ably. (I’m look­ing at you, Wal-Mart.) It’s akin to a middle-aged man danc­ing in a night­club filled with twenty-somethings and try­ing to look cool. (I’ve seen this; it’s funny and sad at the same time.) You have to know the rules be­fore you en­ter the bl­o­gos­phere; it’s al­ready filled with de­tri­tus of johnnies-come-lately who jumped on the band­wagon then quickly jumped off once they re­al­ized that a) they don’t re­ally have any­thing to say or b) it takes a long-term com­mit­ment to keep a blog. (My col­league, Mike, calls this Noodle Code — blogs with no plan­ning or direction.)

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I saw this ar­ti­cle on “wed­ding wikis” on Wall Street Journal’s web­site (www​.wsj​.com). It works like this: a cou­ple are plan­ning their wed­ding, a very per­sonal event to cel­e­brate their union as man and wife. They cre­ate an on­line polling site where they ask their prospec­tive guests to help them de­cide on such mun­dane mat­ters as, “Should I wear my hair up or down?” (if the groom-to-be is ask­ing this, then it wouldn’t re­ally be mun­dane, would it?) or “What song should we have our first dance to?”

Have we be­come that con­nected to each other that we must share every minute de­tail of our lives with each other? It is so­cially ac­cept­able to ask your guests to help plan YOUR wed­ding? I’m al­ready pay­ing for the priv­iledge of at­tend­ing, is that not enough?

As a sin­gle­ton, wed­dings are not my favourite events to at­tend. I mostly go for the food and try to avoid catch­ing the bou­quet. (It’s sim­ple — stand at the back, don’t put your hands up and steer clear of the ra­bid brides­maids who will gladly wres­tle each other for a few glad­i­o­las and roses.) The one joy I get is to see how bad or great a wed­ding can be. I want to be sur­prised, so that I can re­gale my co-workers or class­mates with funny sto­ries (e.g. my aunts danc­ing to Strokin’; the flower girl lift­ing her dress up over her head dur­ing the cer­e­mony). Spontaneity is the key to life and hav­ing every­body in on the fun is, well, not fun.

Again, you also have to do your re­search — how many of your guests are so­cial me­dia savvy? Is it go­ing to come down to a few de­cid­ing on be­half of many? And is this a mat­ter of the cou­ple re­ally try­ing to tai­lor their event for the plea­sure of their guests? Or is it just an attention-getting manou­ver for a Bridezilla? As the au­thor of the piece sug­gests, the true na­ture be­hind a wed­ding wiki is how faith­ful the cou­ple will be to the choices of their guests. If polling re­sults favour an erotic wed­ding cake, I won­der how many brides would ho­n­our that. If I set up a wiki for my wed­ding, I know I would.

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A pre­vi­ous post was de­voted to Tina Fey. I am a Fey-natic and looked for­ward to her movie, Baby Mama. I saw it and was disappointed.

Have you ever walked out of a movie and rewrote the end­ing in your head? And was the rewrite much bet­ter than the drek on the screen? I walked out of the the­atre de­jected. Tina, I thought, how could you do this to me? The movie ended up an­other paean to do­mes­tic­ity. Literally. The last scene head­ing into the cred­its is lit­tered with ba­bies and fam­i­lies. What hap­pened to the sin­gle woman who wanted a baby on her own terms?

I will for­give her, how­ever — she didn’t write the movie, just starred in it. I will wipe this movie from my mem­ory by watch­ing back-to-back episodes of 30 Rock and old episodes of SNL.