“We understand that the PAC decision to support select Members of Congress who contested the results troubled some stakeholders.”

Toyota issued this statement on PAC contributions hours after the Lincoln Project threw their hat in the ring.

 — @ProjectLincoln

The Lincoln Project are agitators with a whole lotta cash. Their abrasive style earned them notoriety during the 2020 Elections and they don’t seem to be going away any time soon.

Since the story broke on June 26, it was clear that Toyota’s comms team dropped the ball. Toyota did not do anything unusual or wrong, except that they failed to read the room.

While the recent announcement tries to fix a problem of their own making, it may not be so easy. I suspect Toyota will be bullied into contributing to causes that they don’t necessarily care for, just to buy the silence of groups like Citizens for Ethics and The Lincoln Project.

 — @CREWcrew

Groups are out for blood and it is in my estimation that this will very likely devolve “extortion” so Toyota can right the wrong. Again, this entire scenario was completely unnecessary and I wonder how much it has cost Toyota, but their walk-back indicates it is serious enough.

We will continue to track it in the background, but I think the crisis has been averted, but like a benign tumor, you don’t want to ignore it in your annual check-up.

Originally published at https://www.getrevue.co on July 14, 2021.

A recent report by Axios shows that Toyota’s contributions to election objector GOP’s significantly higher than other corporations. As with all statistics, the devil is in the detail. Toyota is the second biggest contributor to members of congress, second only to Cubis Corp, a defense contractor.

Corporations are rightly reluctant to get involved in local politics, so it is probably worth thinking about it from the perspective of their specific needs and not so much as a political statement. However, when asked about this, Toyota’s response was rather disappointing:

We do not believe it is appropriate to judge members of Congress solely based on their votes on the electoral certification.

Seriously, Toyota? This is the best you can do? Let’s see what happened though. We created a feed with the following boolean search query:

+toyota +(gop contribution donation congress)

And we looked at both Twitter and Instagram.

As you can see, the negative sentiment is quickly climbing, currently at 27% negative mentions. I would caution from looking at this and dismissing it as a crisis averted. History has shown us that issues like this can easily sit out for a long period, before resurfacing against with a vengeance. It is precisely why we keep a close eye at how conversations are moving.

As this is a divisive issue, we expect to see positive sentiment to counter the negative. However, the real question is, is this the hill Toyota wants to die on?

https://twitter.com/elzubeir_mo/status/1409356416096342016

It’s early and I suspect this issue will escalate. So far, it’s not looking good for Toyota.

Social Listening for Crisis Management

Social listening is one of many components of crisis management, and acts as a cost effective way to gauge consumer sentiments in real-time.

The first thing we have done here is created the feed that would capture Toyota mentions in relation to donations to the GOP. We then start observing the trends as they emerge.

As themes begin to emerge through word clouds, we can then set up new feeds to monitor those specific themes as well. Additionally, influencers on the subject will become more apparent as we continue to monitor and analyze results.

Setting up alerts to notify the stakeholders in your organization is just as important as listening to the right conversations. Having the ability to manage recipients and segmenting them into different groups is what separates professional tools from hobbyists.

Originally published at https://www.getrevue.co on June 30, 2021.

I’m a huge fan of The Handmaid’s Tale show on Hulu. The dystopian setting requires a significant effort suspending your disbelief, in order to enjoy it. Wholesale institutionalized rape, vicious punishments including severing body parts, hangings on the wall.. all in a not too distant future America.

We can sit here and debate how believable Gilead is, but one thing is for certain, product placements were nowhere to be found. In fact, Gilead itself is almost communist when it comes to consumer choices. Foodstuffs are often in short supply, as the new country fights internal and external wars.

During the Season 4 finale, Commander Fred was talking to his wife Serena, where he awkwardly blurted that he would like to maybe Zoom? My ears perked up in the same way my dog’s does when I ask him if he wants to go for a walk. Zoom? That can’t be right.

I played it again and sure enough, he uttered the word “Zoom”. Sheesh. Ok, product placement alert! Then there is a shot of Serena sitting at her desk with her laptop open, with Zoom’s application open. If you weren’t sure you heard Zoom earlier, now you know you heard it right.

Product placement is a marketing technique, where a product and/or service are “hopefully” seamlessly referenced in a piece of work, such as this TV show. The first known product placement in film is reportedly by the Level Brothers in France, featuring Sunlight soap in 1896. And before that, logistics companies lobbied Jules Verne to mention their companies by name, in his famed novel Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).

Today, we have come to accept product placements or embedded marketing without so much as batting an eye. We hear it in music. We see it in movies. Dubai has made product placements one of the cornerstones of their branding strategy. It’s not unusual to hear Nicki Minaj or Drake namedrop Dubai.

But it has to feel natural. It has to feel “right”. When you are in a make-belief world, your imagination is already stretched thin. I don’t know about you, but I simply did not buy it. It was cringe.

Whenever there is a discussion on China, my instincts are to be suspicious of them; a testament to my Western education. But lately, I have been thinking of how it is more than just that. The backlash entertainers and athletes face at home for “giving in” to China makes one wonder what this is really all about.

Let us take the most recent John Cena apology for calling Taiwan a country. Let us remove all emotions from this and look at it this way: While very few countries have full diplomatic relations with Taiwan, in many ways it is treated like a full country. It is not a country, but it’s also not “not a country”. It is understandable to mistakenly call it one. What do you do when you’re in someone’s home and you unintentionally offend a cultural norm for them? You quickly apologize and fix it.

It’s really not that complicated. “Oh, no shoes in the house? I’m so sorry, let me remove mine real quick!” How hard is that?

Unless, you feel that you have a right over the house. Maybe you bought the furniture. Or built the second floor? Now it feels like the host should be so grateful to you that your minor mistakes should be overlooked. They don’t mean anything to you, after all. It’s not like you’re purposely trying to dirty the house. You’re just not thinking about whatever “thing” they’re into.

Back to China and Taiwan. There is the usual old world history filled with wars and conquests. Then came colonization and the trading of countries like Pokemon cards. It is no wonder some think they are the arbiters of what is a country and what is not.

China and Taiwan can figure it out. If the US government chooses to take a position and recognize Taiwan to agitate China or any other reason they have, then that is an entirely different story. I think those making the “Taiwan Is A Country” battlefield cry are unable to see that it isn’t China being belligerent and trying to humiliate Western companies and celebrities. But you’re making it personal when it’s not even about you.

Maybe just apologize and not get involved in other people’s business, until you really are ready to interfere.

It’s called respect.

I am still trying to digest what my eyes have seen from the US Capitol on the 6th of Jan, along with the rest of the world. The imagery of mobs storming the US Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the democratically held election, forever tatted in my mind. Yet, we all knew it was coming, they said. Chatter about this was done in public across social media platforms. We have the analytical tools to detect it. What happened?

How did we know? Because everyone has been saying that this is exactly what they intended to do. I know this because, even though I don’t remember why I set up a search query with the terms: Trump AND election AND “armed groups” as far back as 12/18/2020. I don’t remember my reason at the time, but it clearly was on my mind.

Insurrection Sentiment Analysis Over Time

I thought I would run sentiment analysis on the feed that covered posts on Twitter, Instagram, blogs and mainstream news sites. This is by no means how I would advise you to run your sentiment analysis reports. But, I had no idea I would be looking at this data a month later.

The point is, however, that there was such a clear indication of a problem happening. This is a classic case of Crisis Management that could have been completely averted. None of it had to happen.

See how the positive mentions of Trump and armed groups spiked right before Jan 6? Yeah.

Subscribe now

Pushing The Fringe to The Edge

Twitter and other main social media platforms suspended Donald Trump’s accounts, pushing the fringe elements out of their platforms to the darker corners of the Internet.

But, let us be clear. Twitter alone doesn’t maintain anywhere near a monopoly status here. While those arguments were useful when defending a decision by Twitter to remove egregious content, it is harder to make when there is an unprecedented concerted effort by Big Tech to deplatform. When Shopify pulls the plug, along with Google’s Play Store, Facebook, Instagram.. it’s a total shutdown. I wrote about the inconvenience of unplugging for privacy.

Critics posit that this creates echo chambers and is not good for the public. But, most of us have experienced the social media bubble that results. Any cross-over is hardly an intellectual sparring exercise, but more often than not, it’s just a troll. We’ve been living in echo chambers for a very long time now.

Where do US adults get their political news from?

The truth is, Social Media is where only 18% of US adults get their political news. Just a fifth. The issue with this is that it is not subject to the same regulations broadcast and radio are. It is one thing most people agree on, regulations need to happen. How they will look is anyone’s guess, but this current situation cannot continue as-is. But what are social media doing? Deplatforming.

Deplatforming doesn’t just create echo chambers, but it gives us the illusion that the other side is not listening. I think now we will enter into an “out of sight out of mind” period, where each side completely dehumanizes the other. When we don’t think the others are in the room, veneers of civility fall off.

It would be one thing to have this conversation with the context of only one man. But it’s not. The language he has propagated has become so commonplace, that it will mean others will follow. Too many to make it an isolated incident.

And that, is a problem that deplatforming cannot solve.

Businesses are often faced with moral dilemmas that leave good actors at a disadvantage. Such a dilemma came up when the federal government provided relief funds for small businesses due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a myriad of programs, each more confusing than the other. There’s PPP (Pay Protection Program), which should be a called the Shape Shifter since they keep changing the rules on it.

When news broke about publicly traded companies taking advantage of the program surfaced, some like Shake Shack returned the funds. There are a lot of those programs, and unless you know where to look, you’d be lost. But that’s not an excuse, there’s a lot of money on the table. It’s just sitting there.

So here is the question, if you’re doing well, do you just leave that money sitting there? The little guys who can figure out how to get here, will get it. The little guys who are lost will lose out. regardless. Then there are a lot of guys.. a lot of guys with accountants and people who know how to weed through government regulations. The more know-how they have, the more money they’ll take.

Do you sit it out, because the spirit of the fund doesn’t qualify you? Or do you go after every available legal dollar, with the mindset, you snooze you lose?

Immigrants have always had a bad rep. They’re the needy ones crossing over to greener pastures. But, as economies are battered, anti-immigration sentiments are on the rise. Economic immigration, business immigration, i-dunno-what-immigration.. We have a name for everything, don’t we?

At some point, I have decided that I want to make America my home. This has not always been the case. But why? I mean, the country is a clusterfuck of epic proportions. At best, it’s a civilization in decline.

America is a dysfunctional collective of misfits who are not accepted until they have bled and sacrificed enough. The Irish didn’t just come in welcomed with open arms. Black America still bleeds. But that’s the thing, America is an idea. The idea wasn’t designed for everyone in mind, but we just embraced it whether the Founding Fathers wanted it or not. It is a place that says, fight hard, fight the system, and if you succeed, a few generations later, maybe you’ll be a part of us. That’s way more than my own country ever offered me, or any of the several countries I grew up in.

Having never lived in my own country, I don’t have the baggage of inherited patriotism. America is undoubtedly my favorite country in the world. It always has been. I feel American. Hey, if Rachel Dolezal can identify as black, who says what I can identify as?

I’m sorry, America. I have no plans of going anywhere. I grew up on American culture half-way across the world.. I’ve often wondered about loving a country like my own. It’s something I hear people talk about, but never understood. It’s so weird to just love a country cause you were born in it. I think of it like how one loves their parents? I’m guessing. I really don’t know. But America, it’s a love that grew as we learned more about each other.

My first interaction with America was a major disappointment. I was expecting an open, liberal society. I met Texas. It took me time to appreciate the depth and breadth of American culture. I felt that I did not belong here. America is too conservative. Too religious. Too opposite of what I had thought. What a bizarre thing for a kid arriving from the Middle East finding America too conservative. A Sudanese kid, America.. a Sudanese kid.

Sudan is a country that is unlikely to see any prosperity in the next few lifetimes. Culturally retarded, it is crippled for generations to come. Revolution or not, the country has an uphill battle, even if it’s nice to see that there is some progress of late. But it’s not my fight. I have no feelings for it. I don’t love Sudan. I never loved Sudan. In fact, I find Sudan to be aesthetically ugly. It’s a plateau desert. WTF do you want me to say? I find it annoying when people try to insist on calling it beautiful when it clearly isn’t. I’m sure it has good qualities, but Sudanese society hasn’t matured enough to be able to let go of ‘desired traits’ and finding their own. Either way, aside from my birthplace and passport, I honestly don’t have much else of a connection to the country. Nor am I in love with the culture.

But do I love American culture then? Not really. This is what I love about the America. It’s whatever the fuck I want it to be. I don’t know how anyone cannot fall in love with such a concept. Whatever the fuck you want! I’ll take and cherry-pick what I like. I’ll make it my own. But yes, as a basis, I find American culture to be just fine. It has enough of the conservative all-too-familiar-middle-eastern-shit that I’m familiar with, to the idiotic i won’t wear a mask cause… freedooommmmmm! I love that shit. How can you not?

Growing up int he Middle East, my biggest fantasy was to live free of societal restrictions. I suppose most teenagers felt that way, but mine was deeper. I truly wanted to be out of societal rules. Not for me as a young adult, but for me as a human person. I recognize that America isn’t Scandanavia. But that’s the thing about America, it has many many versions of Scandanavia within it.

So, I’ve made up my mind about you America. I will adopt you as my home and I’ll love you, goddammit! And I will fight the system to be accepted. I know you’re gonna treat me like shit, and I’ll fuck you back. But, it’s all love.

Can I identify as American now?