Author: Jim

While I may not have grown up with social media, I do everything I can to ensure that I stay hip. (I’ve got kids who will inevitably find me to be not cool, so I figure the more I can do now, the less out of touch I’ll be. I’ll keep you posted on that one.) That means that while I explore all of the new social networks and interact with folks all over the country and world, I get to see how folks talk. I try to pick up some of the verbiage, inside jokes and calling cards of what is, frankly, a younger generation.

I get memes now. I’ve got this great online voice now (very parenthetical, I’m told). I can butcher grammar rules like few others, just so I can carry on a Twitter conversation. And in my six years of doing this stuff, I’ve seen that being oneself online gets the best reaction and engagement. Government-ese is not welcome. Actually looking like you’re enjoying yourself is highly recommended.

So when I take my personal experience and try to infuse it with the work social media accounts that I manage, I get some push-back. We’re the Health Department, Jim, people take us seriously. (The unspoken part of that conversation is that I should take us more seriously, too.) (And that’s when I roll my eyes.)

The problem is that we in government are falling behind this emerging trend. This new language. Madison Avenue is long embraced the tongue-in-cheek, the slightly off-color, the inside joke. (And it’s not like they’ve been successful with any of that, witness the fact that no one smokes, diabetes is a scourge of the past and everyone uses a condom. Roll eyes again.) The public usually loves a good joke, but on social media, a good joke is gold not because it’s funny, but because it’s share-able. I can retweet Oreo’s joke about the power going out during the Super Bowl and now I look funny. (The term you’re looking for is transference.)

Now think of the last public health message you heard. When I retweet that, how am I viewed as a result of that transference? Probably like my kids will see me in a few years. Nagging, boring, out-of-touch, lame.

But I think the tide is turning (God, I hope I’m right about this.) Aside from Madison Avenue’s slick messaging, other forward-thinkers are starting to understand the power of the share-able message. To understand that being human is the best route to virality. For example, President Obama, when commenting on the impending sequester, chided the media saying he couldn’t do a “Jedi Mind Meld” with the Republicans to solve the problem. The geeks among you will have already seen the problem with that term (if you’re not that geeky, Star Wars and Star Trek references don’t go well together). Mere hours later, the official White House Twitter account came out with this:

This image does two things. First, it’s eminently share-able. If I retweet that, I look in-touch, wink-and-nod funny, hip. (Political leanings aside, of course.) Second, it addresses the underlying point. It’s about the sequester and the damage the White House says it will do. Take those two things, package them with quick approval, a distinct lack of legal watering down, and put it on a sharing network, and voila! Winning, as they say.

I have hope that we, as government communicators, can learn a lesson from this. Please, let’s loosen our collars a bit. Have a bit of fun. Be human. (Not half-Vulcan or whatever the heck the President was trying to do.)

There are times when I envy fire PIOs (and trust me, it’s not often, as I’ve seen fire responses). The times that most easily come to mind are when naming a wildland fire. Where it starts, no matter how ridiculous the name of the place, is what it’s called. (Except for little fires, one of which was called Samantha, after one chief’s daughter.) Hurricanes and cyclones, while more rare than wildland fires, get very specific names. And just this year, the Weather Channel corporation started naming winter storms (and believe you me, I’ve got something to say about that).

Now contrast that with our friends in health. We’ve got this new bug popping around in the Middle East and a bit in the UK, and we don’t know what to call it. Most folks in the media are either calling it coronavirus or SARS-like. As you can see from the CDC link above, they’re calling it “novel coronavirus.” (Which, between you and me, isn’t very helpful, given that every new coronavirus out there–and there are tons–is novel.)

I recently asked the wonderful Helen Branswell of the Canadian Press what some of the scientists were calling it. Her response? The even more confusing hCoV-EMC or EMC2012.

This isn’t the first time we’ve had this problem either. A lifetime ago (when I was Jimmy Jazz) I wrote about this same exact problem with the H1N1 flu pandemic. You remember the disaster that name was: swine flu, swine-origin influenza A virus (S-OIV), H1N1 flu, novel H1N1 influenza A virus. And yet, even after all of those etymological gymnastics, the name wasn’t very descriptive. In fact, the chances that some other flu is out there that meets all of the descriptive criteria laid forth in every one of those names is actually pretty good.

And then, my reason for complaining. About a week ago, the WHO started tweeting to reporters and members of the public to dissuade folks from calling the new coronavirus that is currently in the news SARS-like or SARS-like. Mike Coston covered it exceptionally well.

And this is where I think (for the first time ever, probably) I disagree with Mike. The new term, nCoV, is only more precise and more descriptive than some term the media used. It is not precise or descriptive. And furthermore, the reason the media was using SARS-like in their reporting was because they needed some description that the public could understand and relate to. They were using plain language, as opposed to the gobbledygook that most of us in health (and the WHO is the worst offender) use all of the time.

Which leads me back to my original point. Our naming conventions (if one could so generously call them conventions), have been demonstrated to and continue to cause confusion. The National Hurricane Center got raked over the coals earlier this year for their linguistic contortions around Hurricane Sandy (which I’ve already talked about once) in an effort to adhere to the science of the storm and not the needs of the public. And that was after one single storm! Yet we in public health continue to confuse the issue and the public.

Do we start naming pandemics? Develop criteria for watches and warnings? Designate some central authority to start listing out each new Salmonella outbreak in an attempt to differentiate between the half dozen we see every year? Honestly, I don’t know, but I do know that our failure to act in the best interest of the public is shameful, and will–if it hasn’t already–cost lives.

I’m one of those strange people who like to go to media relations training sessions. I think there’s a non-zero chance I’ll be interviewed one day and I want to be ready to not make a fool of myself.

I’ve always thought that calculus was logical, and I’ve always encouraged others with a similar expectation (non-zero chance of standing in front of the media) to do the same. My rationale was always, it’s better to practice it now than to have to learn how to do it in front of a camera. But that hasn’t always pushed people to action, unfortunately.

Furthermore, it’s usually not the folks that I talk to that are the problem. They, for the most part, understand the need to do media training. They’re muckety-mucks and realize that they have a non-zero chance, too. No, the real problem is their front-line employees. Regular Joe’s and Joette’s that are, more often than not, the face of an organization. Call takers, service people, front desk staff, salespeople.

You might not know it, but they’ve got a non-zero chance of being in front of a camera, too. You see, they’re the ones that talk to the media before you do. They’re the ones that let the media in the door, the ones that act as gatekeepers. And, I know you’ll be surprised by this, but sometimes the media just sticks their camera in people’s faces and hits record. And it’s just as likely to happen to your front-line employees as it is to you.

From now, though, I have a new tactic. I’m just going to show the following video and say, “are you sure no one in your organization will react to a camera like this?”