I’m behind on my writing. A nasty cold, a couple of speaking engagements, and some urgent client work have made it tough to find time to blog. I spoke a week or so ago at the Airports Council International Media Relations conference at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. The conference was very interesting – it was an assembled group of communications professionals from major airports across the country. I have rarely given much thought to the unique challenges of managing an airport’s reputation, so this conference was a real eye-opener. The presenters before me did a great job of talking about the implications of user-generated content. Think about it – a routine arrest for drunk or disorderly conduct can be captured via a mobile phone, shared with the media, and then blown out of proportion on a slow news day.

This got me thinking about our personal responsibility when it comes to creating content online. People seem to think if they capture an image or incident that there are no restrictions on how it is shared. I am starting to disagree. I think we all have a personal obligation to make sure that any content we create is used in context, and that all parties are treated fairly. In the examples I saw from the airport conference, reporters were getting their hands on assets created by the flying public, and were then running stories with little fact checking and making assumptions that were completely false. This puts an unfair burden on the airport communications professional to set the record straight, and more importantly it can create fear and anxiety in air travelers. Given as much as I travel the last thing I want or need is more anxious people in airports.

We know that people are unintentionally creating news reports, and we also know the media are running stories based on this content. If we are all journalists now, don’t we all have an obligation to ensuring that the stories we create or contribute to are true, in perspective, and helpful to the general public? It is almost though, in some cases, the tables are turned and the citizen journalists have to uphold a higher standard or reporting. I know I plan to – I travel with an iPhone, a BlackBerry with camera, and a digital camera with video capability. They’ll remain in my pocket the next time I’m dashing from gate to gate.

Equally as interesting as the conference was the time I got to spend with the DFW Int’l Airport public affairs / communications team. Ken Capps, VP of Public Affairs at DFW hosted a dinner at the awesome restaurant in the Grand Hyatt at the airport. He had many great stories about running comms at an airport, and I greatly appreciated his insights and hospitality. More importantly, I appreciated his commitment to transparency in digital communications, and was excited to hear about his plans to push the digital envelope in the next iteration of the DFW website. He has a great team that I got to spend some time with – Megan Bozarth who is the marketing manager, and Cynthia Cooper, a marketing specialist. They are working together on DFW’s web presence and are very committed to providing a great experience for air travelers. Brian Murnahan spoke about the challenges of media relations for an airport, and Sarah McDaniel-Langhorst also had an interesting perspective about working in a comms role for an airport. I always assumed the mentality was along the lines of “get them in, get them out,” but Ken and his team are truly committed to creating a pleasant experience throughout the entire airport. That can’t be an easy task – this is an airport that is bigger than all of Manhattan! I’m quite jealous of my colleagues James Florez who is Managing Director of our Dallas office, and Kent Pingel who is day to day project manager on our work for DFW, in that they get to work with this awesome team every day.

We launched two new websites a few weeks ago for one of our most important clients, Hormel Foods. The two sites are significant because they represent a fundamental shift in how the company is committed to listening to stakeholders to learn what THEY want, and are truly using digital to create an experience as opposed to just deliver information.
The sites, HormelFoods.com and HormelFoodsRecipes.com used to be part of one big jumbled corporate site that included all of the corporate stakeholder content along with all of the brand information and a recipes library for consumers. This was probably fine in 1999, but the company is growing quickly and aggressively expanding in many different directions under the leadership of CEO Jeff Ettinger. Hormel Foods conducted research to learn what all of their stakeholders wanted in a company web presence, which was very instructive but not necessarily surprising. (Corporate audiences don’t want to be bogged down with all of the consumer “fluff” but they do want to know it exists. Consumers want to access corporate content on request, but are far more interested in recipes, etc.) I love all of my clients (I know, insert kissy noise here), but I am especially proud of Hormel for this effort because it represented more work, more time, more money, and more maintenance into the future - but they did it anyway.
These two websites are in their infancy as the company has big plans to evolve them and add numerous features over the coming months, but I think they represent a tremendous step forward for Hormel Foods and a significantly improved experience for the many people they need to talk with. It took a lot of dedicated people at Hormel Foods, under the guidance of Corporate Communications VP Julie Craven, and a lot of talent from my agency led by Bryan Oakley and Steve Alberts, but it was well worth the effort. I can’t wait to see what comes next. Congratulations team!

We don’t normally talk much about our client work on this blog, but yesterday was a special day for a special client. We worked with the US Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing to unveil the beautifully redesigned US $5 bill. It was especially notable for the digerati in our firm as it was a complete digital unveiling with a newly redesigned Web site, a Web site takeover splash page, a live Internet news conference, and online media relations. Of course, there was a host of traditional media activity as well too.

Educating the public on the redesigned currency is critically important as new security features make it very easy to confirm that a bill you receive is an authentic note. Digital is one of the best ways to provide this education in that it is a highly visual media that allows interaction with the security features, and provides numerous ways to reach various target audiences with relevant and customized messages. It was the first time the government unveiled their new currency designs completely over the Internet, and overall the day was a success.