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It’s impossible to avoid hearing about the latest crisis in corporate America. Mattel and other toy makers recalling Chinese-made toys tainted with lead paint. U.S. Airlines and other carriers frustrating travelers with record flight delays and cancellations. Patriots were caught cheating. Whole Foods’ CEO blogging under the disguise of an analyst, allegedly to drive down the stock price of its acquisition target, Wild Oats.

When do you think a company should respond to a crisis?

Upon the news of Mattel’s lead paint problems, if you also import products from China and think that many of your products might also be tainted, do you respond immediately or do you wait as long as it takes to be certain? As a marketer in charge of PR, how would you manage the messaging around a crisis? Let me know what you think!

In April, at the annual leadership conference for the American Marketing Association held in Chicago, the CEO announced that the association would be changing their logo. They have threatened to go away from the wishbone for many years, but this time they had rough drafts to show us. The new brand was revealed to a house full of marketers and there was a dull roar of mixed response. The new concept was based on a single letter, “M”.

If you were paying attention, you probably heard about the big event they put on called “M Planet“. Well, they want to follow that theme and essentially change the AMA into just “M”. So, in 2008 when I become president of the local chapter in Boston, I guess I will be, “MBristowe, president of MBoston”. It will be interesting to see if the letter “M” can become synonymous with “Marketing” and more specifically with the AMA.

Apparently the AMA is not alone in it’s hunt to own one of 26 letters of the alphabet as their brand. While Oprah Winfrey and Overstock were battling for the letter “O”, QVC has had it’s eye on the letter “Q”.

In fact, on October 1st, QVC will reveal another step in their push for a new brand of their own. On a huge New York bilboard, QVC will continue staking their claim on the letter “Q”. The first set of billboards they put out in early September, in NY, Philly and LA, had the catchphrase, “iQdoU?“. Most people had no idea what it meant, but changing a household name… or acronym in their case into a single letter isn’t the easiest thing to do I suppose.

Take a look at a video of the “QVC” billboard:

This new billboard reveals the answer to those who were wondering what it all means:

Technorati Tags: qvciqdoubrandingmarketing

MySpace has revealed plans to create a mobile version of their online social network. It will be free for users through advertising by Fox Interactive Media and Millennial Media. At first advertising will be limited to Fox but should be opened to others by the end of the year.

Here is a quote from a Financial Times interview:

“Accessing the Internet from a mobile phone will soon be as common as text messaging and voice calling, and it’s FIM’s goal to deliver these new free, ad-supported experiences as additional options for our users on top of our incredibly popular premium mobile services,” said John Smelzer, Senior Vice President and GM of Mobile for Fox Interactive Media.

As Mr. Smelzer suggests, mobile phones will help people be more connected to their Space by sending and receiving MySpace messages and friend requests; commenting on pictures and profiles; posting bulletins; updating blogs; finding and searching for friends; and viewing or changing mood status.

Technorati Tags: socialmediamyspacesocial networkingweb 2.0

Hillary Clinton launched a new ad to the Web that faded to black just like the final episode of the Sopranos.

The video drew more than a million viewers to the Clinton campaign Web site and to YouTube, which further illustrates the growing reliance by some of the more technologically savvy campaigns to connect with voters online.

In the new Clinton clip, Hillary Clinton, like Tony Soprano, spins through the musical selections in a diner in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., near her home in Chappaqua, as Bill asked her about the campaign and song winner.

The Soprano touches are subtle but perfectly obvious to any fan of the series. Nicely done.

Technorati tags: hillary clintonhillary-clintonsopranosyoutube

Last May, it was speculated that Google would buy China’s primary portal, Sina. However, many were unsure if it would be good idea for Google to own a news portal were all the content was “filtered” by the Chinese government.

Yesterday, Google announced a new partnership with Sina Corp as part of its continued efforts to provide value in China. Under a strategic partnership agreement, Google’s search service will be embedded in Sina’s search box, according to the Sina news release.

“This partnership leverages the strong offerings of two Internet powerhouses to provide Internet users in China [with] a better overall experience,” Sina’s chief executive officer Charles Chao said in a statement.

The deal will see Google users gain easier access to Sina’s news content as well as co-operation in advertising and search services.

Google partnerships in China include Soso.com and 163.com. With this deal, Google now has a close relationship with the 2nd, 5th and 6th most popular search and portal destinations in China, with Google.cn sitting down at 7th. Within the next 18 months, China will have a wider population of broadband users that the US and Google’s strategy of building relationships with the top 10 portals is a great way to increase awareness and much desired market share.

Technorati Tags: sinagoogle新浪china

Powerset is has been carefully flying under the radar screen on how their new (well-funded) “natural language” search engine works. After some initial media attention last fall, the company has been locked up and isn’t saying much.

On Saturday night, while I was watching the “Four Eyed Monsters” video, Powerset showed a screen shot (see below) of a sample search result on their blog. Many of us have been waiting to see how their product works and this sneak peek showed us that Google isn’t able to effectively match the natural language search on Powerset… even with the use of quotes.

The example they used in the sample was “politicians who died in office.” Clearly, doing the same search in Google does not produce results that are as useful as the same search done on Powerset. It will be interesting to see what happens when they launch and whether or not Google will find a way to improve their engine.

Technorati tags: powersetgooglesearch enginenatural language search