From the best collection of social media minds to a hilarious take on Verizon’s iPhone news, in case you missed it, here’s a sampling of information shared this week by the gang at NST:

There’s a study that says Twitter is ripe with accents.  Wonder what Texans are fixin’ to do in their Tweets? (Rebecca Howe)

Five reasons you really can’t miss the San Diego Social Media Symposium. (Teresa Siles)

Chick-Fil-A’s next ad campaign will be more about saving a reputation than a cow. (Yours Truly)

Jon Stewart’s take on the Verizon iPhone is hysterical. (Natalie Haack)

SDSU names Rocky Long new football coach to replace departing Brady Hoke. (Bill Trumpfheller)

Another reason to love Southwest Airlines is because its pilot holds up take off for the grandfather of murdered child. (Mary Correia-Moreno)

From optical illusion to Badger brand equity, in case you missed it, here’s a sampling of information shared this week by the gang at NST:

The next frontier in social media?  The booming Hispanic market. (Michelle Livermore)

An onslaught of digital technologies has laid waste to traditional media. The new year will bring a clearer picture of what will emerge from the rubble. (Greg Kershaw)

What’s worse?  Missing a curveball because of athletic ability or lack thereof or whiffing because your own brain fooled you? (Aaron Blomberg)

More people talk about the University of Wisconsin online than any other college or university.  We at NST think that’s mostly due to Natalie Haack, an avid Badger fan who watched her team fall to the Horned Frogs of TCU in the Rose Bowl.  We expect Natalie to personally boost SDSU’s online buzz.  She has dual allegiances, and if the two teams meet in any sport, plan for a bandwidth meltdown.

So a 20-something added a new twist to “the dog ate my homework.” She’s blaming Steve Jobs’ iPhone for not waking her up in time for work.  Maybe the Apple chief should send her a pocket-size mirror for her next blame game. (Yours truly)

Here’s a look at the best Facebook page strategies: http://bit.ly/fhYdZg. (Natalie Haack)

If you haven’t heard of Ted Williams, the man with the golden voice, you live in a cave. He’s been hired by Kraft and was reunited with his mom.  It’s only January.  Wonder what will top this buzz in 2011? (Mary Correia-Moreno)

Friday Fodder

‘Twas almost the day before Christmas, and rather than weekly posts and tweets, the NST elves are sharing favorite holiday treats:

Price Arnett: LOVE Bill Murray in “Scrooged,” an impeccable mid-80s remake of the Dicken’s classic. Another favorite from this week, courtesy of Dustin Smith at Davis Elen Advertising: SNL’s Lost Ending of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Dana Carvey is epic as George Bailey.

Tanya Johnson: We love going to Viejas to see the Legend of the Ice Princess.  The nightly show is based loosely on American Indian mythology. It’s the story of Crystal, a young fairy princess whose magical powers bring winter to the holiday season. It’s a short holiday show that makes you feel good when you leave.  We also love to go ice skating out there.

Beatles fan Micki Stockalper surely has this Lennon classic on her list.

Mary Correia-Moreno and Michelle Livermore share a passion for “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  Says Mary: “Ultimate Christmas movie for me.  I just love the concept behind the film – how life would have been so different for others if you weren’t there.  Makes you really appreciate how each person in your life is there for a reason.”  Says Michelle: “I cannot even watch the movie and just see this part and start bawling. I am crying now. What a great thing it would be to see what the world would be without me in it. Or maybe it wouldn’t – who knows.  I love this whole last part. Everyone feeling sad should just watch this a bunch of times. I love that Clarence gets his wings, too.”

For Jessica Northrup, we’re thinking it’s a toss up between favorite singer Willie Nelson or a touch of family on the Big Island.

Janet Elk: When I was growing up in the Chicago area, every Christmas season the best short cartoons played on Garfield Goose and Friends were Hardrock, Coco and Joe,  Suzy Snowflake and Frosty the Snowman. It’s amazing you can still find these classics on YouTube.  I still love them! Takes me right back to being a kid.

Krystin Williamson: I grew up studying ballet and dance, so I’m a true Nutcracker fan at heart. I love the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” with Tchaikovsky’s classic score, the beautiful snowflakes dancing in formation and the exciting Arabian, Spanish and Chinese adaptations. This link happens to be from MGM’s motion picture “The Nutcracker,” but nothing beats seeing it come to life by a local ballet company. 

Katie Rowland: Since I grew up watching just as many black-and-white movies as color films with my mother, it’s no surprise that the nostalgia of the holidays has me longing to cuddle up with a blanket, hot cocoa and watch “Little Women.” Although there are many film adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s novel, the 1949 version is my favorite. Nothing conveys the holiday spirit more than the generosity of the March girls, who spend their prized pennies buying gifts for their mother and share their Christmas feast with their less fortunate neighbors.

As director of social media, don’t you think this fits neatly for Teresa Siles?

Aaron Blomberg: The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas is/was my favorite Christmas movie as a kid.  I was so obsessed I watched it multiple times a day, every day, year-round for many years.  It follows the misadventures of Ted E. Bear as he searches for the meaning of Christmas.  Not entirely sure of why I was so obsessed with this movie, but I’m guessing a teddy bear named Ted E. Bear had a big part in it.

Natalie Haack is dreaming of a White Christmas.

Greg Kershaw: It’s not often you get to rock out at church, but this song always puts me in the Christmas spirit (and makes my stepmom nauseous).  Transiberian Orchestra’s Carol of the Bells, performed by Lincoln Brewster (at my church).

Rebecca Howe: My favorite Christmas song is My Grown Up Christmas List by Kelly Clarkson.  This song has an inspiring message and reminds you that Christmas isn’t always about the gifts wrapped under the tree.  Plus, Kelly Clarkson is among my top two favorite American Idols (the other is Carrie Underwood).

Bryan Spevak is the office music aficianodo, and we’re thinking Another Rock ‘n’ Roll Christmas is apropos.

Kerry Tucker didn’t share, so we’re giving him a leg up.

We’re hoping the vacationing Bill Trumpfheller remembers not to put WD-40 on his sled.

Dave Nuffer loves mariachi.

If three is a trend, then we’re betting trends expert Sharon McNerney says more than 6 million views is some good holiday cheer.

Yours Truly: In some ways, we still believe.

From the best screw up in news media to how to double food production to feed the hungry, in case you missed it, here’s a sampling of information shared this week by the gang at NST:

Some believe there is an entire generation that has never dialed a 1-800 number. Where are these digital natives and other web-savvy consumers going to air their grievances? http://bit.ly/eOevmS

A website called Regret the Error, which follows corrections, clarifications, apologies, and trends in the world of journalism, has some fun each year by picking its annual “Error of the Year.” http://bit.ly/evL4kZ

Given the state of the U.S. economy, the recent news of the growing number of those losing their jobs and uncertainty in Congress about extending jobless benefits, we may be facing something bordering an epidemic of hungry, needy families. http://bit.ly/fpE0ds

To adorn the office of his new Brooklyn apartment, Saif Ahmed chose a truly one-of-a-kind piece of art. He bought a kit from online retailer DNA11.com to swab some of his cheek cells, and then mailed the sample to the company. http://on.wsj.com/ihisRi

With the launch of Places, Facebook began allowing businesses to merge their Page with a Place they’ve claimed. While there are some advantages for businesses focusing on generating foot traffic to a single physical location, merging has important disadvantages including lost functionality (at least for now). http://bit.ly/evygtK

To have success as a PR professional, as with all professions, it is essential to keep up with the latest news and techniques in the industry. http://bit.ly/ejS2hs

We’ve all been hearing about Facebook’s new promotions guidelines, and here they are http://on.fb.me/a0XuTZ.

We’re getting uncomfortably close to the day when there won’t be any surviving vets of Pearl Harbor or WWII.  The history books just don’t capture the heroism of hearing these stories from the mouths of grandfathers. http://bit.ly/ewtq91

Everybody loves viral videos. That’s why they’re “viral.” Ad agencies have been trying, in their own way, to replicate the success of viral videos to help their campaigns get exposure and new fans. http://on.mash.to/ggG72D

While facilitating a crisis media training session for a relatively large national brand, one of the participants quipped, “But I don’t even care about social media. I’d rather just deal with real people.”

So would most of us.  I long for the day when people less than a half-dozen steps away would get off their arses and have a conversation versus send a stream of e-mail notes. But I digress, and I was one of those curmudgeon print reporters 20 years ago (albeit a cub) who thought hell would freeze over before people would opt for reading their news on a computer monitor.

Every organization should realize social media’s impact on dissemination and consumption of information, news and entertainment. Market power is shifting from organizations and brands, consumer and trade, to the consumer largely because of technology. Social media continues to grow as a consumer tool for decision-making, and it still seems many organizations and brands either struggle with, or refuse to accept, how or why they need to know how to engage in the Internet-connected, Tweeting, Facebooking, photo- and video-uploading stakeholder-engaged world. The seemingly few who are connected, Tweeting, Facebooking, et al. and inviting engagement from stakeholders recognize these connections are good for their organizations, brands and their business.  They “get it” that engagement is critical, whereas hordes of others in social media just see this as another platform to push out marketing messages a la Web 1.0

This consumer-driven engagement brings peer-to-peer endorsements and criticisms on organizations, brands, products, services and issues to an extraordinarily higher level than ever experienced. Word, not too long ago, spread gradually – days, weeks, maybe even months.  Today, with the Internet and all its social media outlets, we’re talking a matter of hours and even minutes, and not just with the families on your block.  Consumers can reach entire communities locally and globally.

That alone has a profound impact on how we manage crisis situations.  Social media is becoming the preferred platform on which an organization’s crisis unfolds and where control of the matter at hand is won or lost.  And that preference is coming from all corners except the organizations facing the crisis.

A prime example is the “United Breaks Guitars” fiasco.  The airline refused to take responsibility for breaking Dave Carroll’s guitar, and after nearly a year of getting nowhere, Carroll released his now famous video about United on the Internet, exposing the airline’s poor customer service. The video gained more than 500,000 views within a week, and mainstream media, including CNN, NPR, CBS, USA Today, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other traditional outlets globally, picked up the story, some citing “digital revenge.” Experts far and wide said United waited too long, finally proclaiming on Twitter, “This has struck a chord w/us and we’ve contacted him directly to make it right.” Too little too late? Many say, “absolutely.”

Ditto for Domino’s.  The pizza HQ waited 24 hours before posting a response on YouTube, where two workers – clearly anticipating their Culinary Institute of America acceptance letters – literally picked at some new ideas for ingredients.

There’s also Nestle, when consumers got a sweet tooth for revenge over the company’s interactions with consumers and Greenpeace supporters on Nestle’s Facebook page.  When you insult someone online, be prepared for the mob mentality – and to never win.

And there’s British Petroleum.  Where do we begin?  How about just looking at the hijacking of its brand on Twitter (see @BPGlobalPR).  Yes, it can happen to you and most know it’s a fake, but the lesson is realizing the risk of losing control of your brand.

This is all what digital trends expert Steve Rubel says clearly about what we’re facing: “An entire generation is growing up that will never dial a 1-800 number to reach customer care.”

We are dealing with real people, about 227.7 million of them in the U.S.; just not on the phone or in person – they’re on your desktop, laptop, mobile phone, iPad and soon to the next tech gadget coming down the pipeline, except for Kin.

Are you ready?

So Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship rose from rags to riches kicking the mining community in the family jewels.  In every case study and textbook on crisis management and crisis communication, values are the compass that guide individuals, governments and corporations through the most trying circumstances.

Massey Energy and Blankship’s values?  Money and power, and if there’s a ring of truth to the cascading revelations on safety violations and the wielding of political influence, we’re witnesses to what could be the most shocking view of corporate greed.  This could make Enron look like a hiccup.

Twenty-nine coal miners died in the April 5 mine explosion in West Virginia, and Blankenship’s communication strategy is ignorance – void of action and commitment for the victims, their families and the community. “It’s natural that the enemies of coal would view Massey as the primary enemy . . . I think that I’ve proven that we run safer coal mines — you know, most of the time — and accidents sometimes happen. We’ve got to figure out what happened here,” he said, according to Associated Press.

Human instinct puts us all in a defensive position when faced with potential blame, but smart and careful thinking of our impact on others makes us realize compassion is critical in the worst of times.  Rather than displace blame on “enemies,” or ridiculously state Massey sometimes runs safe mining operations, Blankenship’s better approach would have been to focus on the tragedy, its impact on employees, their families and the mining community, and an investment (whether intellectual, financial or both) in working with federal regulators in determining the cause of the accident and ensuring the mitigation of something like this happening again.

If Blankenship were smart enough to rise to the top of the mining industry, he’d be wiser to do a little homework on best practices in crisis management and communication.  Here’s Johnson & Johnson’s, which has been in the textbooks for decades and will be for decades more.

This is when true colors come out, and right now Massey and Blankenship’s is green – everyone else, no more than the victims’ families and the mining community, is seeing red.

It’s interesting to read news reports and analysis of Tiger Woods’ April 5 press conference, most notably the comments that follow from readers and viewers.  For the most part, we’re witnessing an icon who has fallen from a very high perch take baby steps to repair a once-golden image, while detractors try mightily to chip away at an already-fractured and fragile persona.

There appears to be an expectation that Tiger will be a changed man a few months after his world came crashing down.  Seriously?  It took more than a decade for Tiger to build this image on and off the course, and while it may not take as long for him to right his capsized ship, he’s looking at a couple of years – if not longer – to regain both the trust and accolades he’s been so accustomed to enduring.

Meanwhile, he’s doing the right things: becoming more public again, taking on more questions while keeping close to the vest what he feels is private (good for him, and can you blame the guy?), and constantly owning up to his errors and commitment to doing what’s necessary to regain trust.

Tiger doesn’t have an easy road ahead of him, and the detractors aren’t going away soon.  Here’s hoping he stays the course and proves them wrong.

The Tiger Woods brand consistently delivered on its expectations — integrity, dignity, determination, competitive fire and loyalty — on and off the golf course.  The brand experience was highly attractive to be repeated by fans, endorsers, news media and even his competitive foes, all telling of great stories and experiences with anything Tiger.

For Toyota, quality was the axis of its brand. The automaker entered the U.S. market decades ago amid a storm of skepticism on reliability, and Toyota quickly and has since silenced the naysayers, albeit until recently.

In produce, character is often reflected in the quality of products delivered to customers and consumers alike — freshness, taste and appearance — and in environmental stewardship, labor relations and food safety standards.

Read more thoughts in The Packer on what leaders in produce, and any other industry, can learn from Tiger and Toyota.

Toyota is curiously sitting at no. 7 in Millward Brown’s top-10 list of most trusted brands as Congress spent the better half of the week giving Toyota a tongue-lashing for its handling and mishandling of the automaker’s quality control crisis.

The study’s authors readily point out that the data was collected over the course of 2009 and doesn’t reflect Toyota’s current dilemma as it unfurled at the beginning of this year.  The authors also note the automaker could learn from Tylenol, which in 1982 recalled 31 million bottles of pills after seven people were killed in the tampering scare.  That brand, which was forced to recall children’s liquid medicine last year, sits at no. 6 in the study.

Tylenol maker Johnson & Johnson has a history of effectively managing crisis situations, though the FDA earlier this year ridiculed the company for being slow to respond in its most recent crisis.  What this goes to show you, however, is a history of doing the right thing and acting aggressively in a crisis situation can maintain and build trust among stakeholders, consumers in particular.  Trust is fragile, and how you respond in a crisis situation can build and maintain trust, the authors state.

Toyota started off this week with public apologies before Congress.  How it fixes its problems, communicates with stakeholders and develops systems to prevent further lapses will determine if the automaker regains or builds trust, and where it will stand in next year’s report.

Tiger Woods spent about 14 minutes doing what he should have done nearly three months ago: he took his head out of the sand trap and decided to address his crisis head-on, albeit in a tightly controlled environment.

Better late than never, and we can spend hours rehashing the premise of acting quickly to manage a crisis (hundreds did it when news broke last fall, myself included, and more will berate him for waiting too long).  What Tiger did accomplish today was take that critical first step down the longest fairway of his life.  Rather than jump on the bandwagon and dissect everything he did wrong in his “no-questions-asked press conference,” here’s a look at what did well:

• Pulling his head out of the sand.  Crisis management is pure hell loaded with fear and uncertainty for any organization, let alone one individual, unaccustomed to dealing with panic.
• Acknowledging it was his own behavior and actions that led to his tarnished image and brand.  He didn’t make excuses and took accountability.
• Pointing out he veered from his personal set of values.  Very few in a crisis situation get this, that reputations and brands are built and will fall based on values.
• Admitting the impact of his actions on others, particularly his wife and kids; additionally, his fans – children in particular, topping it off with acknowledging he failed as a role model (Charles Barkley be damned).
• Asking to believe in him, not right away, but over time.  Tiger knows he needs to regain trust, from his family, from the corporate sponsorship world, from his peers and from his fans – and he also knows that’s a feat that won’t happen simply in the days and weeks ahead.  It will be his actions over a longer period of time – off the course.

Check out this interview on KUSI News on Tiger Woods’ first public appearance http://bit.ly/dff9ei