The airline America loves to love, Southwest, is in a bit of a safety issue with the FAA and Congress. It is reported that some safety inspections were not conducted or planes not grounded. This post is to highlight Southwest’s PR handling of the situation.

As is the tradition of Southwest, they are upfront. Right on the home page of their website is a link to their statement on the story. Excellent. Some would counsel to put it in the news section, let the issue go through a 24-hour cycle and be done.

Compliments to Southwest and their entire team for their candor on the matter. In what appears to be an issue more about paperwork, bureaucracy and miscommunication instead of dangerous conditions. The language being used by media and Congress is predictably emotional: “unsafe,” “threatening safety,” and from Congressman James Oberstar, “one of the worst safety violations.”

The investigation also involves the Whistle Blower Program, which in itself creates an “us versus them” situation and not at a “Let’s see what happened here” investigation.

In addition to the Southwest statement being in position A on the website, the CEO, Gary Kelly, was on CNN this morning and made the expected rounds of media coverage. While this issue must go through its cycle, the initial round, which included Southwest airlines voluntarily disclosing missed inspections last spring, shows Southwest performing in accordance with its image of being upfront with its passengers.

P.S.: And as you’d expect, it’s on the Southwest Airlines Blog as well. Keep us posted, Southwest, and while it’s good to know your passengers are still using you to get away, your PR team is staying put to work professionally through an interesting situation.

My side comment: Blog leader Paula Berg is a class act in any situation. Great work, Paula.

The social media idea path is like watching cells grow and multiply. Here is the exciting path of this idea related to Dunkin’ Donuts and the Super Bowl. Sunday, January 20, I’m on Twitter the night of the Green Bay/New York Giants NFC Championship game. People tweeted about the final moments of the game and upon its conclusion, I started tweeting with my Boston friends who like Dunkin’ Donuts, how that popular east coast franchise can capitalize on the Super Bowl with two teams competing from their two largest markets, Boston and New York City. Those friends included Doug Haslam, Chip Griffin, Geoff Livingston (DC guy but also responded to tweet string), Scott Monty, Sarah Wurrey, and Mike Volpe.

A quick review of the Dunkin’ Donuts website reveals that Dunkin’ has extensive experience working with NFL promotions and even has run contests with both the New York Giants and New England Patriots. Excellent. Dunkin’ Donuts slogan is America Runs on Dunkin’ - Are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?

On Monday, January 21, I thought of an idea and blogged about it on our marketing blog about a Super Bowl contest that ties into the slogan, Dunkin’ Donuts Has a Super Opportunity , the team with the most rushing yards would earn for that market a free something, maybe a Dunkin loyalty card with a free cup of coffee loaded on it or a free coffee during the two hours after the game (you get the picture). I also sent in a link to the idea on the Dunkin’ Donuts website, through customer relations.

on Wednesday, January 23, I received the resonse below. I’ve given the response grades, and invite yours as well. A couple of more data points here. 1) I did not submit to a PR or media inquiry because I did not find an email for one on the site at the time and 2) Dunkin’ Donuts is currently running (pardon the pun) a user generated campaign on You Tube called How Do You Keep America Running.

Here is Dunkin’s reply to our Rushing Yardage contest idea:

Dear Albert,

Ref # 4488839
Here are my grades for their response:

1) Timeliness they at least replied within a couple of days. - A Excellent,

2) Sincerity, it looks like a boilerplate response - C to me some of the copy is a bit condescending , however, I can understand this given that someone might claim rights to an idea, which leads to my next grading topic,

3) Legal cover, nice job lawyers - A

4) Brand loyalty impact, has the response improved your feeling of the brand - B While the response did not uniquely notice the submission, it did attempt to respond in a timely and polite manner and for that Dunkin’ Donuts deserves some credit.

Overall It’s a B, time for another coffee.

I know it’s early, but can you imagine a political convention without a known nominee going in? Hot damn, that’s the best reality TV that can be. So get this, the last convention that was somewhat in doubt was 32 years ago with Reagan and Ford, however most pundits say the last true brokered convention was 56 years ago. Let’s not quibble, the fact is this year both the Democratic and Republican conventions have a chance of being decided in real time. They resemble sporting events and not coronations.

They would be the first brokered convention with mini DV cameras, live blogging, Twitter, Utterz… yipes!

Obama, Clinton, Edwards for the Democrats and McCain, Romney neck and neck with one more heavy Giuliani still poised to win a couple of big states on the Republican side.

Look I just can’t get too excited thinking about it because the chances are still slim, but indulge me for just for a moment.

Delegates will become citizen journalists and spin doctors will all of a sudden wish they had a Twitter or Utterz account. (Twitter and Utterz training available here act now!).

Sure those folks are wired with text messages and crackberries, but they will need to reach out to people that may not be in their distribution lists. They may have to reach out to someone that was the opposition just 10 minutes earlier. They may want to try and drive web users to online polls or engage them to show which candidate can motivate outside the walls of the convention hall because that’s the ultimate victory. Eegadds!

Will journalists be plugged into twitter profiles for the candidates or the candidates’ spokespeople (that is a separate conversation whether to have surrogate profiles to float trial balloons)?

Yes social media friends, a brokered convention is one part crisis, two parts breaking news, and all of it adds up to an interesting scenario for microblogging platforms. Stay tuned.

Here is some background on the convention process and brokered conventions

Election 2008 Countdown and Delegate Count

Democratic Convention Watch

Power Line News

Republican National Committee

Democratic National Committee

Time 32:16

Plenty of attention is given to participating in blogs, join the conversation, be open, be authentic, yada yada yada. The early adopters have tested the social media space with ample case studies for dozens of new books and information for panel discussions.

The hidden winners in the blogosphere who get a fraction of the fanfare are market researchers. This podcast is dedicated to the corporate executives who are skeptics of joining the conversation, but as you’ll hear here, have considerable reason to at least listen to it, it being first the podcast and then the thousands of conversations taking place on the web daily.

Look at just one segment of commentary and social media, www.tripadvisor.com, they have more than 10 million reviews of hotels. Forrester research shows that 36 percent of travelers look at reviews and of them, 73 percent report the reviews affect their choices. More from an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer - It’s just the tip of the iceberg known as the blogosphere, but in reality is a bunch of people talking just like they do at parties, conference rooms, or ball games. The only difference is online, you can listen in on them.

This podcast is the second and concluding episode of a conversation with Umbria founder Howard Kaushansky. Umbria, at www.umbrialistens.com is one of a handful of companies that provide detailed insights into what people are taking about in blogs, and reviewers’ comments on the web and to a great extent who is saying it.

The bottom line is this

1) There are millions of comments being made on the web about nearly every industry or profession.
2) Even if your company has no intention of starting a blog, the comments that exist can provide significant insight into your company, your competitors, and your market.
3) Blogs and social media is not just a playground of the younger generation, middle age baby boomers use social media, blogs, and travel sites just as much as the 18 -24 year old set.

On another note, Marketing Edge listener Alison Coffey is the winner of the Join the Conversation book drawing. Our next book is Paul Gillin’s The New Influencers. To throw your name in the drawing send me an email at marketingedge@providentpartners.net with the words New Influencers in the subject line.

Time 12:56

The first stop for marketers who are attempting to determine how to approach social media is to listen to the conversations taking place on the web. Most executives are going to ask, what are people saying about our company or our industry? Who are they and does it matter to us?

While the numbers for social networking are mind boggling, an estimated 60 million users on Facebook alone, the perplexing issue for marketers that have must justify their spending is what is the impact to the company, will it grow sales, brand, influence? Or conversely, will not being there hurt us in some way?

In this podcast we highlight one company that can help answer those questions. Umbria, who can be found at www.umbrialistens.com. There tools search blogs, product review comments, and other social media sites looking for company mentions and more importantly context. For example, it is not good enough to learn that Starbucks was mentioned, but that a woman having a bad day found a moment of peace over an egg nog latte at Starbucks. Now that is listening. Umbria industry reports include healthcare, consumer electronics, and other industries

For those into the viral marketing concept, whether Umbria or a strategy that includes alerts and watches from Google, Technorati, Digg and others, the key is having a process that puts your ear to the ground – sorry had to use a cliché somewhere in this piece. Other tools include Sentiment Metrics and Cymfony, there are plenty of choices. Ths issue is with growing numbers of participants in social media, this tactic should be on your 2008 coporate marketing budget.

Do you have a strategy for listening to social media? What tactics do you find helpful?

Join the Conversation Giveaway

Joseph Jaffe’s book Join the Conversation is a good one. Well worth the read. We are giving away a copy with my comments included in the margins. It’s my way of joining the conversation - email me at marketingedge@providentpartners.net with Conversation in the subject line. We’ll have a drawing for the winner on December 19.

Giving Back

Every comment and email we get Provident Partners donates a food item to a St. Paul food shelter. Last month 24 items were donated. Thanks for sharing.