Days You'll Never Forget

There are days that you never forget. Days in your life that when you let yourself think about them, the memory is more clear and vivid that what you did in the last hour. Every detail floods your being as though you are watching a high definition television screen. Only here the experience takes over your body as if you are living it all over. 

Even though it is something you never want to relive.

And before you know it there are tears running down your face.

The day Kennedy was shot is like that for me. The day my father died. The day I walked out of a full time corporate job for the last time. And today.

When I left my house this morning to go to the gym I was glad it was overcast and humid. I've grown uncomfortable when today is one of those picture perfect September days in New York when the summer isn't really over and the fall hasn't really begun. The kind that of day it was twelve years ago.

I walked past my local fire house and I saw the trucks parked on Amsterdam Avenue blocking the driveway.  The garage was open and inside it was set up with tables and chairs and white paper tablecloths covering the tables. One firefighter stood on a ladder raising the flag.

By the time I was finished at the gym and I walked back the tables were filled with people. The families. Firemen were greeting each other at the entrance. One leaned on a cane. Someone was filming outside. He told me they asked not to take pictures of the families.

I paused. Because I will always pause today. As long as I live I will never not take a moment to remember.

I will go back to that moment standing in my office on 19th Street watching Pat Kiernan on NY1 with a picture of the North Tower behind him and what looked like a plane hitting it. I will be in our large conference room with my colleagues watching as the second tower hit. I will walk up Sixth Avenue with three of my coworkers in a daze along with throngs of strangers. I will see the looks of all those people - resolute and staring straight ahead. The sirens will blare in my ears. The firetrucks will race by.

I will walk into that church on 23rd Street and cry. I will walk back into my apartment and for the first time not feel safe there. I will walk through Central Park, the sun casting brilliant shadows over the eerie silence. I will hear a quiet I once thought impossible in this city. I will sit in that cafe on Second Avenue with my friend and no matter how many vodkas I have I will still be sober. I will live the days and the weeks after trying to make sense until I realize it will never make sense. I will let myself feel it all again as I watch the memorial on television. Until they read the name of my friend I went to junior high and high school with, William J. Dimmling. I will cry. 

This is my ritual of remembrance.

And then I will go back to my life today. I will go on. Because that is what you do. Even after days you will never forget.

A Lesson In Branding

I’m all for changing things up. Renovation. Reinvention. Redress. Redo. Rebrand. Whether it’s an individual or an organization it’s a good thing to do when things aren’t working or when things get stale.

But it can also be a dangerous path. Especially when things are working.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since I heard that NY1 News, the 24/7 local newschannel dedicated to serving the five boroughs of New York City is purported to be changing its name after twenty years. I admit to having a soft spot for the channel. I admit to having worked as their Director of Sales for seven years. But I write this as a marketer who believes change is often necessary and can be a very good thing when done right.

According to varying reports the impending change was announced last Thursday as the result of a marketing study revealing that the average NY1 News viewer did not know that if they opted out of their subscription plan with Time Warner Cable they would no longer get to drink their coffee while Pat Kiernan reads In The Papers. The viewer is not aware this is a proprietary channel that can only be seen if you are a Time Warner Cable household. Because they are not making this connection, Time Warner Cable is losing subscribers to alternate cable providers.

So they are planning a rebranding, which will include all seventeen news channels across the country, to something approximating Time Warner Cable News. What exactly?  That's still unclear.

The plan, as reported, is to call it something warm and inviting like Time Warner Cable News.  Because after all, doesn’t everyone just love the cable company? Doesn’t everyone just dance with joy when that big ol’ bill arrives in the mailbox every month? That will stop the erosion of its subscriber base for sure.

Right. The parent company. The brand that does not have a loyal following. The ones that are not well liked. At all. The ones that people are constantly complaining about, be it price or service. That will fix it.

This is where it gets dangerous

Based on what I have read, the rebrand has nothing to do with a problem with the NY1 News brand or product, but rather with the Time Warner Cable brand and with customer retention. It has to do with alternate cable delivery methods and a digital landscape where a younger generation is not even sure they need a cable provider anymore. It has to do with price points. But NY1? Not much wrong with that brand. A little kitschy for sure. It’s part of the charm. But it works.

So what happens next?

The decision is announced and the uproar is loud. That’s what happens today. The rules of marketing have changed.  Do something they don’t like and people have easy access to platforms where they can be heard. They have the power to create PR nightmares.

Consider the #saveNY1 Twitter streams. The outpouring of articles. The angry viewers that Pat Kiernan is trying to calm down, assuring them the content will be the same. The fresh rage from the Time Warner Cable haters. There is even a Save NY1 petition that has surfaced.  Which may sound a little overdramatic. NY1 News is not going away. Really.  But the damage from a PR debacle in today's landscape takes on a life of its own.

Changing things up is always a good thing. But it has to be for the right reasons.

Seth Godin says we are living in a connection economy, “projects that create connections, and those that don’t.”

That means a lot of things. It means the old rules don’t work anymore. Your customer wants to be heard. They want a good product experience. They want to be engaged with, not talked at. They want you to pay attention to their needs. They want a relationship with you. They don’t want to feel used.

When it comes to NY1, they’re doing it all right.

Under the leadership of Steve Paulus (who it is reported to have fought the decision) it has grown to a station with a national reputation that spawned others like it in cities across the country, a dedicated newsroom, a loyal and engaged viewership, a history of breaking stories and a strong connection to the community that solidified in its superior coverage of 9/11.

You don’t fuss with a brand that is working. You hone it. You polish it. You make it shine brighter. You keep its recognizable name.

The brand you work on is the one that doesn’t glitter quite so brightly. You start by understanding the rules of marketing have changed. Today they are about engagement, user experience and customers feeling connected to the product. You start to work on improving that relationship. You don’t start by doing more damage to the shaky one you already have.

Earthquakes and Hurricanes and Flooding, Oh My!

There is much to fear if you let it when you live in a city like New York. My mother taught me at a young age how to hold my pocketbook on the subway so my wallet would not get picked and to never to stand too close to the edge of the platform in the event a crazy came by and pushed you in. There is the fear of that giant crane on the construction site next door that with one big swing could come crashing into your building. Or unsecured scaffolding that could crush those walking underneath. Being stuck in an elevator or worse, a subway car between stations crosses many minds. I have a personal fear of falling through a subway grate. And lets not forget the big one, the fear of a terrorist attack that 9/11 proved to be far too real.

But you learn to adjust and take it in stride. No one who lives here for an extended period dwells in fear. Those who do usually wind up moving someplace else.

Earthquakes are not on your average New Yorker's fear list. Nor are hurricanes. Yet in the span of one week our fair city has experienced both. As I write this Irene has been downgraded to a tropical storm and the next big worry is how much flooding will occur. This all just two weeks away from the anniversary of 9/11. All of this has tested even the hardiest of New Yorkers. So it was no wonder there was an edge in the air the last few days as bottled water and batteries disappeared from the shelves. We had reason to worry and to prepare. And I applaud Mayor Bloomberg in how he readied the city. Because this is after all Mother Nature we are talking about. We can't control what she decides to do. But we can control our actions, get our go bags ready and stock the house with supplies.

Who can't seem to control themselves through any of these potential disasters is the media. Their job at times like this is to keep us informed and in touch, and dare I say, perhaps even calm us, not to exacerbate and make the potential of real disaster seem even greater than it is. But that was not the case. I liken them to addicts in search of a fix. Their fix being some fear-inducing lead-in that will get you to turn them on or click through a link to their website. A reason to change the inflection of their voice as though they were acting in a play on Broadway instead of reporting the news.

When I was a kid during the very turbulent sixties you looked to a Walter Cronkite to steady you. Today finding anyone who carries any of his soothing characteristics is rare. I stopped watching CNN yesterday when Wolf Blitzer led with roof tops blowing off the houses in Virginia and then stopped with no details as to whether it was one roof or a dozen or where in the very big state of Virginia that was. He wanted me to hang around for his next update. I didn't. I switched channels. And I switched and I switched. I was in search of some sort of  sensibility in reporting as people up and down the East Coast were waiting in trepidation for when the hurricane would hit them.  I wanted information not hype. I wanted calm not frenzy. I wanted reporting that served as a resource to the community, not tied up in ratings and advertising revenue and a desire to be #1 but targeted at keeping the public informed.

For the record I settled where I should have started. With my old friends at NY1 News, which in full disclosure I once worked for. I prefer the even inflection and well thought out questions of  Pat Kiernan and the saneness and intelligence of their meteorologist, John Davitt, to any of my other choices.

The next big fear is the flooding factor. But I will add one more to that. The fear that if the media consistently creates more hype instead of more reporting, we will all start to tune out. And then like the boy who cried wolf, we will not know when we should really be paying attention.


Do you think the media did their job reporting on Hurricane Irene?