Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback would have been well-served to follow such advice, and as Christopher Budd points out, his office did an excellent job of making a minor blip into a major media circus. To make matters worse, much of what appeared in the original news story never actually happened.

Long story short: Emma Sullivan, an 18-year-old high school student, in Topeka for a Youth in Government session with the Governor, posts the following off-color Tweet:

The Governor’s office sends a nasty-gram to Youth in Government, (rightly, in my opinion), expressing displeasure at the student’s lack of respect for the Office. Her school principal calls her on the carpet and demands she write a letter of apology. The story lands on the front page of the Kansas City Star, becomes a free speech issue, and the Governor ends up apologizing to the student.

And the student’s roster of Twitter followers grew from 65 to 15,851 and counting.

Is this a great country or what?

Unfortunately, the meeting in the principal’s office, which became the eye of the media storm, didn’t happen the way it was reported.

The Star’s Nov. 23 story stated that Sullivan’s principal was, “forcing her to write an apology to the governor’s office, with the principal even giving her talking points to hit. [Shawnee Mission] East principal Karl R. Krawitz declined to comment on the matter Wednesday, calling it a disciplinary action: ‘It is a school issue, a private issue, not a public matter’.”

Turns out, Krawitz’s reluctance to initially discuss the matter became a “Three’s Company” moment. Only there’s no Regal Beagle in Kansas.

According to a blog post by Star columnist Yael Abouhalkah:

“It turns out one of teen tweeter Emma Sullivan’s original claims—that her principal was forcing her to apologize for an offensive tweet last month about Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback—wasn’t true.

Shawnee Mission East Principal Karl Krawitz says in a blunt email to Brownback’s staff that ‘The governor should know we did not force any letter of apology.’ (The email is in a report by NBC Action News.)

And Sullivan belatedly this week acknowledged the same thing: No apology was ordered.”

Turns out the story was fed to the media by Sullivan’s older sister, a poli sci major at Wichita State, and many facts of the case were lost in translation.

But why should the facts ever stand in the way of a good story?

Personally, I agree with with the Governor’s communications director, Sherriene Jones-Sontag (as quoted by the Star):

“[The tweet] wasn’t respectful…In order to really have a constructive dialogue, there has to be mutual respect…It was important for [Youth in Government] to be aware of the comments their students were making…It’s also important for students to recognize the power of social media, how lasting it is. It is on the Internet.”

Listen up, corporate big-wigs, government leaders and persons in power: YOU ARE NOT GOING TO WIN AGAINST THE LITTLE GUY IN THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION. Not ever.

But feel free to pig-wrestle. Just do so at your own risk. And think twice before going after someone smaller than yourself.

Children have been brutalized. The truth has been concealed. Administrators have perjured themselves. And for the first time since 1965, someone other than Joe Paterno will be head coach of the Penn State football team. (Recommended reading: Jason Gay’s column from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.)

My colleagues have spilled barrels of ink on this subject, tagged #hownottomanageacrisis, but yesterday evening, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett demonstrated how to calm a stormy sea when chaos strikes.

Speaking to a group of reporters in State College, Gov. Corbett showed excellent command of the issues and returned the focus to the safety and well-being of children, a point that’s been lost in the aftermath of JoPa’s firing and ensuing student riots on the Penn State campus.

You can read excerpts from the Governor’s news conference by CLICKING HERE.

Just what the coach and administrators knew about the behavior of former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, who has been charged with 21 felony accounts of sexually abusing eight boys, is unclear. What is clear, however, is that no one connected with the program ever brought allegations of wrongdoing to the police.

Corbett, who served as Pennsylvania Attorney General and worked on the Sandusky case prior to becoming governor, made a point not to comment on the specifics of the case, deferring to current Pa. AG Linda Kelly, whose office is now handling the matter. He didn’t speculate. He didn’t offer his opinions on matters beyond the facts of the case.

He spoke directly to Penn State students, supporting their right to assemble and express their opinions, and admonishing them to represent their school in the best possible light. Expect television ratings for Saturdays Nebraska-Penn State football game to smash projections.

When asked if Pennsylvania taxpayers should be concerned about child safety when so much state money was going to Penn State, Corbett was at his best, stating that child safety should be the primary concern of ALL educators, from grammar school up.

“Parents across the state want to know that their students are safe. And I think it’s incumbent upon all colleges, universities, high schools and middle schools, grade schools, to keep the children safe.”

There will be more pain in the future as victims of Sandusky’s crimes come forward and the details of the case emerge. During a difficult time, the Governor took charge and let the world know that the Keystone State is doing everything possible to bring justice and healing.

Nice job, Gov’nor.

Lencioni, founder and president of a consultancy called the Table Group is a father of four apparently energetic boys, who most frequently learns humility in his own home. (As the father of a four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, I can relate.)

His key point is that it’s easier for business leaders to gripe about what their reports are not doing right than it is to set and enforce standards for employee conduct:

“[I]n most organizations, the biggest problems arise not because leaders are actively promoting the wrong behavior, but rather because they’re passively doing so by allowing people to get away with such behavior with impunity. The most common reason that leaders commit sins of omission is that they just don’t feel comfortable confronting people about what they are or are not doing. Instead, they look the other way and hope the problem goes away.”

Over time, everything goes straight to heck while corporate leaders sit isolated in their corner offices complaining.

It’s akin to turning on the bathwater, heading downstairs and expecting that everything will run smoothly at bath time. After all, what could go wrong?

Managing is tough. And humbling. Especially when you realize that you are the problem.

In his work boots he stood a mere 5-7, but he will always be a giant to me.

He loved to sing and he loved the great outdoors. He loved Jane, his wife of 39 years.

He was not afraid of hard work and earned a living working with his hands. He was a great husband and caring father to his sons, Danny, Doug and Shawn.

He also was a second father to me and dozens of other young men as Scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 393.

He taught me how to build a fire and how to respect and handle a 30.06 rifle. He woke up early to count my laps when I completed the mile swim. And he proudly presented me with my Eagle Scout award in 1984.

Mr. McConnell, who passed away at the age of 61 in 1998, is one of the hundreds of mentors who will be honored on Tuesday, Nov. 1 at the first-ever Mentors Challenge, a benefit for High Aspirations, presented by J.E. Dunn Construction.

The event is free of charge, but we ask that guests make a tax deductible contribution to High Aspirations in honor of the person or persons who helped you achieve success in life.

Space is limited, so please reserve your spot now by clicking HERE.

Thank you for supporting High Aspirations, a Kansas City, Mo.-based mentoring program serving the social, emotional, academic and spiritual needs of African American males ages 8 to 18. For more information, visit www.highaspirationskc.org.

As a proud alum (B.S., College of Communication, 1990), I’m hoping the ads resonate with the folks who compile all those “best colleges” lists and help drive applications. According to the story, the campaign, developed by Watertown, Mass. agency Allen & Garritsen, seeks to position B.U. as, “among the ‘leading,’ ‘most respected’ or ‘great’ centers of ‘research and knowledge’.” Each ad bears the tagline, “The World Needs to Know.”

Although I’m 20 years removed from my own rain-soaked graduation in the Commonwealth Avenue Howard Johnson’s parking lot, I’m having some trouble accepting this new brand position from B.U., even though I hope it succeeds.

If memory serves, the only research going on at B.U. back in the day involved the best ways to sneak alcohol into Warren Towers and why the eagle is a stupid mascot, especially for a school that calls itself “Boston College” despite being located in Newton.

The good news for me is that I chose to apply to B.U. at the right time; they probably wouldn’t even sniff at my S.A.T. scores today. I also had the advantage of being one of the five in my freshman class not from Long Island or New England.

And I suppose that’s the real point of the campaign, which is designed to take B.U. beyond its “commuter school” legacy and persuade those who participate in the school-ranking surveys to bump B.U. from its current perch at #59 in the 2010-11 edition of The Times Higher Education World University Rankings, to somewhere less mediocre.

The hope is that a higher rank will beget more applications from better students, which in turn will boost the school’s rankings.

At a robust 50 grand per year, B.U. is like every other institution of higher learning fighting to fill its freshman classes. In tough economic times and population in decline following the Gen Y bubble, they need every warm body they can get. And if they still have the College of Basic Studies, it’s the ultimate safety school.

My favorite part of the article are the quotes from Allen & Gerritsen Creative Director Doug Gould, which include:

“We were skeptical to begin with…[W]hen they told us how much they’re doing, our minds were changed.” (Translation: “When they told us they had a half-million-dollar budget, our minds were changed.”)

“We haven’t done anything with a heavy amount of spin.” (Just the normal amount of spin we’d use in any campaign we create. Okay, maybe a little bit more than normal.)

“Running an ad about knowledge and learning should be interesting on its own merits.” (I’m sorry? Oh,  I must have been daydreaming. Could you repeat what you just said?)

In all seriousness, I applaud B.U. and A&G for this campaign and sincerely hope it works. And then B.U. can quit sending me those letters asking for money.

“The Business of Values” recounts the discussions from a recent symposium hosted by the Harvard Business School on the “sticky subject of ethics.”

“With the poor standing that business leaders have in society today, there was wide agreement that the grand experiment to leave values out of business education has probably not gone so well, to put it politely,” said Rock, executive director of the NeuroLeadership Institute. Ya think?

Personally, I think teaching ethics at B-school is like teaching celibacy at the Bunny Ranch. If you haven’t bought in by the time you get there, four credit hours (or even two full years) of ethics teaching probably aren’t going to change your ways.

I think many in the business world come from the “Miller’s Crossing” school of ethics.

Regardless, Rock observed three current schools of thought on teaching ethics and values in business schools:

1. Ethics = values. “These schools were teaching students how to recognize their wider responsibilities — like their deeper legal and fiduciary responsibilities, as well as less obvious responsibilities to their employees, stakeholders and the wider community.”
2. Universal ethics. There is a universal set of values, which should be taught to all business students, although this approach begs the question of which values should be taught and how.
3. “Ethics from the inside out.” Helping students to understand their individual values and how to exercise those values when facing ethical dilemmas.

The one phrase in the article that most deeply disturbs me is a quote from one unnamed participant, “[I]t is easier to make headway teaching values if we take the stance that we are all deeply flawed, in deeply complex, chaotic systems.”

I find this sort of thinking defeatist, but I can understand why someone would feel this way. After all, you don’t have to look too far to find stories about leaders from business, government or The Church behaving badly.

I used to promote the Kansas City Business Ethics Awards, which are held annually to celebrate business owners who “did the right thing,” even when it cost their business money or even an important client relationship.

We had a heck of a time getting any attention from the news media (even back in the days when newspapers employed reporters). After all, the media don’t report on airplanes that land safely or on people who obey the laws.

But I disagree with the notion that we’re all deeply flawed. Or that life is terribly chaotic or complex.

We are all imperfect. We all make mistakes. I would argue that most people make the right choices most of the time and that most people genuinely care about their families, their neighbors, their communities and the world.

Further, in the age of social media, it’s tougher for an individual or a company to hide bad behavior or unethical business practices from the public. The truth always gets out, and even a seemingly small decision, such as where you’re sourcing raw materials, can (and will) come back to bite you.

I am optimistic about the future, as I hear more people choosing to take responsibility for their actions and to think twice about the pursuit of material possessions vs. doing what’s right.

I applaud business school educators for making the effort to make ethics an integral part of business. I hope they also will hold the line when it comes to pursuing justice and celebrating fair play.

As one might imagine, response to Mr. Ebert’s missive elicited some angry responses, so much so that Facebook pulled his page from the site. Ebert fired back:

The thumbs and keyboards of Ebert defenders and defamers, as well as Ebert himself, have been working overtime ever since.

Facebook spokeman Andrew Noyes later was quoted as saying that Mr. Ebert’s page “was removed in error.”

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a libertarian when it comes to the First Amendment, and I applaud anyone who chooses to exercise this right and out himself as a jerk or an idiot….it makes life easier for demographers to sort them into target audiences boxes.

But the larger issue here is the impact of social media on the laws of free speech.

For instance, let’s say the leadership at Facebook tomorrow decides they really want to see Barack Obama re-elected next year, and that they’re going to pull the pages of every other candidate. In theory, it’s their bat and ball, and they can make up the rules as they see fit.

Same thing with Twitter. I doubt that’s going to happen, but it could.

I may be wrong here, but unlike the “equal time” rules governing broadcast media (which use the public airwaves to deliver their messages), there are no laws governing what private businesses can and cannot do with their online media properties.

And that means that anything you’re posting to a social media site belongs to someone else, and that they have the power to remove, edit, block or delete your content depending on how they feel on any given morning.

Your freedom of speech is only as free as the owners of social media platforms want it to be.

If you’ve got five minutes to spare, check out the video HERE.

Eliason, whose efforts helped reverse negative public perceptions of the cable giant, offers four tips for companies considering Twitter (and other social media) when responding to customer complaints:

1. Be a person. Eliason suggests using your own name and Twitter handle when responding to a complaint, rather than having a response coming from @BigConglomerateX. “Hello, my name is Frank, and I work for Comcast, what seems to be the problem?” establishes a person-to-person connection that can help speed resolution of the problem.
2. Invite empathy. Think about the situation from your customer’s perspective. How would you want to be treated? It’s important to acknowledge the problem and it’s okay to say, “I’m sorry.”
3. Speed matters. Respond in a matter of minutes, if you can. You can be more deliberate with other forms of social media, such as blogs, but Twitter is instant.
4. Establish trust within your organization. Many corporate communicators worry about how to apply traditional approval processes to Twitter and other social media. Eliason urges teams to meet with senior management and legal to explain the how and why of social media, and then develop simple rules to enable team members to respond quickly and without exposing the company to additional risk.

Great way to start the week. Best of luck in your new job, Frank. And thank you for the wisdom.

The annual convention, which is expected to draw 130,000 participants to San Diego this July 21-24, is the place where you’ll see folks dressed up as their favorite Star Trek characters and where fans are truly fanatical.

While most of us gave up Dungeons & Dragons when we hit high school, the Comic-Con set is known for attracting freaks and geeks who are both hardcore and hard-wired, and are widely sought after for their social media savvy and buzz-building power.

Warner Brothers Television Group Chief Marketing Officer Lisa Gregorian calls them “evangelists,” and rightly so.

It makes sense, then, that the big movie studios and television production companies would choose Comic-Con as the launching pad for big-budget projects such as “Tron: Legacy” or “Sucker Punch.”

But not so fast.

Fishing where the fish are makes perfect sense, except that sometimes the fish don’t bite. And worse, they sometimes tell everyone else in the pond that the bait is not worth the bite. Both “Tron” and “Sucker Punch” failed to deliver at the box office.

Fans of the HBO show “Entourage” may fondly remember an episode from Season 2, in which Vince is troubled at Comic-Con when a well-known blogger, portrayed by Rainn Wilson, promises to write a scathing review of Vince’s new movie, “Aquaman.” (Never mind how Vince manages to score a positive review in the end.)

Imagine the power of 130,000 Rainn Wilsons dissing your movie in the months leading up to opening, and the ripple effect these evangelists create via Facebook, Twitter, message boards and chat rooms.

Betting big sometimes means losing big. Hank Aaron hit 755 home runs but he also struck out 1,383 times.

Next time you’re thinking about launching your “next big thing” at the industry’s largest trade show, consider first building buzz among your most loyal and vocal following and allowing them to carry the message to the masses.

The first, from our good friends at the Harvard Business Review, authored by Coca-Cola Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing & Commercial Officer Joe Tripodi, profiles the corporation’s growing interest in harnessing the power of brand advocates in pursuit of doubling worldwide revenues by the year 2020.

“In the near term, ‘consumer impressions’ will remain the backbone of our measurement because it is the metric universally used to compare audiences across nearly all types of media. But impressions only tell advertisers the raw size of the audience. By definition, impressions are passive. They give us no real sense of engagement, and consumer engagement with our brands is ultimately what we’re striving to achieve. Awareness is fine, but advocacy will take your business to the next level.”

Tripodi notes that Coca-Cola-related content generated 146 million views on YouTube, but only 26 million of those views were of content actually created by Coke! Wouldn’t it be great if you had your marketing messages amplified by a factor of five-and-a-half?

The second article, by Weber Shandwick’s Tim Marklein, offers an excellent practical guide for marketers seeking to align impressions with expressions when measuring the impact of traditional and social media messages. His advice:

1. Integrate analytics across multiple channels;
2. Track engagement and impressions in parallel; and
3. “Contextualize,” which is my favorite point of all:

“[I]f you’re targeting consumers, then USA Today (3.3 million daily readers) might be valuable to you because of the audience and media context within which it appears. If you’re targeting business leaders, then  WSJ.com (12 million monthly readers) is probably more beneficial in reaching your broad audience.  The industry blog (10,000 daily readers) might be a more targeted way to reach specific decision-makers who would buy your company’s product.

Now let’s add engagement into the mix. Generally speaking, people consume daily newspapers in a passive way with limited engagement.  While newspapers certainly impact opinions and behaviors, that impact is hard to track and fragmented across a broad audience.  With the WSJ.com piece, by contrast, advocates and detractors alike can easily share it via email, blogs and Twitter.  The industry blog might only have 10,000 readers, but they might be ‘the right 10,000′ — and if it’s a good blog, then they’re actively sharing, debating and commenting on the post, which extends the reach through trusted peers and leads to even more engagement.”

There is strength in numbers to be sure, but real growth comes from engagement.