Just a week ago, the National League won its first Major League Baseball All-Star game since 1996.  But much like a tree falling in the forest without anyone around to hear, the contest didn’t make much of a sound.  The national television ratings were the lowest ever for the mid-Summer classic.

This is not a new concern.  It took a near economic depression to put a dent in attendance, but the All-Star game was broadcast on free TV.  Neither is it a new insight that the sport has a marketing problem.  The list of “how-come’s” has become nearly etched in stone, among them that there has been a drop in the number of African-American players, performance enhancing drug use has tainted results and reputation, the games are too long and there are too many of them broadcast.

What is less certain is the best list of “what to do’s.”  Those that exist fall short by ignoring two essential qualities of Major League Baseball.  First, it is a regional game.  And, second, connection requires continuity.

It was another special game — Old Timers’ Day at Yankee Stadium — that made this point very well.  Writing in the New York Times, columnist William C. Rhoden cast his vote for the marketing power of continuity:

“Despite the team’s seeming narcissism, Major League Baseball could learn something from the annual showcase of Old-Timers’ Day.  The Yankees are the only team that annually holds one, but it is something that baseball should encourage every team to do periodically. Old-Timers’ Day is the celebration of continuity and reunion. Few teams have the Yankees’ history, but every team has former players”

It will be far harder to resuscitate the regional game.  Whether it was the Dodgers and Giants moving west, the advent of the airplane, the ubiquity of cable television, free agency or inter-league play, a set of events has conspired to erase the lines that used to separate the ivy walls of Wrigley, the wind of San Francisco and the bright lights of New York.

When each fan knows as much about the opposition as his or her own team, hope is replaced by calculation.  Rotisserie Baseball (forerunner of the Fantasy variety) is exhibit A. In the always-on, 24-hour-a-day, up-to-the-second, Internet-driven media world, the attractive power of mystery is eliminated.  It makes it hard to be a fan of a team in what use to be called the “second division” when you know just how hard it really will be to “get ‘em next year.”

But all hope is not yet lost with regard to creating and strengthening a fan’s commitment to the continuity of the game.  So rather than suggest games be set to a clock or a shorter season or longer play-offs, Major League Baseball could do some things that reinforce the continuity of the game.  From the time it is played by children to the time those kids as adults take their own families to the ballpark.

Here are three suggestions:

1.  Underwrite the use of wooden bats in college games

It is hard to reconcile the “ping” of a college game with the “crack” heard in major league stadia as being of the same game.  Questions of safety alone should prompt MLB to divert some of its resources to the cause.

2.  Play more during the day

The game is best viewed in day light.  For the last 20 years, only once did attendance at Cub’s games — played predominantly during the day — fall below the league average.  Television contracts and good ratings for compelling post-season games will make this a difficult task, but balanced against an eroding trend line of participation and interest ought to make it a no-brainer.

3.  Make the path to the major leagues more visible

For every Stephen Strausberg who goes from college to the major leagues in months, there are 50 Jesus Feliciano’s who spend years in the minor leagues.   MLB can make their path — whether from Rookie ball, A, Penn League or the Arizona Fall League — a point of pride and anticipation.

Whether every team ought to have an Old Timers’ Day is every team question.  But that, too, seems an easy answer.  Invest in continuity and reap commitment.

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On May 14, O’Dwyers PR carried a column I wrote about the battle over publishing excerpts from David Kirkpatrick’s new book, “The Facebook Effect.” It struck me then as it does now that the problem had little to do with copyright and everything to do language.

The full text is below:

WAR OF WORDS SHOWS PRINT AND WEB DON’T SPEAK SAME LANGUAGE

By John Berard

The war of words – and potentially lawyers – between TechCrunch and Fortune is more than evidence that the web and print worlds don’t speak the same language; it is proof that they may not for a long time.

This will be costly to them and a disservice to their readers.

At issue were excerpts — either to print or on which to draw inspiration — from a new book about Facebook by long-time Fortune editor David Kirkpatrick. The public relations folks at the magazine made the offer to one of the leading web venues for technology news and insight, TechCrunch. That much is clear. That much may be all that is clear.

Fortune says “And if you don’t mind, once you’ve read the excerpts, please let me know if you choose not to post on one and not the other or both, which of course we would love.” TechCrunch hears, “Post the excerpt, please.”

From such tiny acorns can grow some mighty, hard as oak disagreements. But more than just being lost in translation, the disconnect is a public disservice. Fortune and TechCrunch are both trusted sources of information who need to get it together for the rest of us.

What makes the timing on this fight ironic is that it comes at a time when the web is working hard to create a fresh market for magazine and newspaper content.

As James Fallows notes in his cover story in the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly, “How to Save the News,” Google “now considers journalism’s survival crucial to its own prospects.”

And the iPad is being viewed as a way to rejuvenate the subscription business model savaged by the “information wants to be free” Internet. According to New York Magazine, “iWired, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Glamour will be the first Condé Nast magazines to have versions created specifically for the new Apple iPad.”

Both Fortune and TechCrunch seems to want to play a role in what comes next. Otherwise the magazine wouldn’t have offered and the web site would not have accepted. Each was committed to helping the author build value for his work and earn the gratitude of their readers by alerting them to the book’s arrival.

Each valued timeliness, relevance and making sure the guy who created the content got paid. With that much in common, how the heck did they get into a row? With that much in common, they can’t stay mad.

I am betting that the new working relationship between the world wide web and the universe of “All the News That’s Fit to Print” will prove valuable, unless it is killed by expectations set to high, standards set too low or a language barrier that cannot be overcome.

As publishers like Condé Nast fully embrace the rich-media, interactive and real-time nature of the Web and mobile devices they will be forced to learn the lingo. And as web publishers come to see the value of trusted content brands, they will work to partner.

That was the good intention of the deal Fortune and TechCrunch thought they had struck. The only question now is whether those good intentions are merely a paving stone on the way to, well, you know, or are they an early sign of the next big thing?

I am betting on the next big think but I do not underestimate how difficult it is to learn a new language.

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Context reared its potent head in the New York Times on the subject of Google.  Here is the bit:

“Google’s high-profile mistakes hurt because they convey the impression that Google’s behavior is increasingly inconsistent with its ‘Don’t be evil’ mantra.”

And again on the matter of electoral politics.  Here is that bit about the primary defeat of former Republican, now Democrat Arlen Specter:

“’The legacy of political switches is that you can’t do it,’ said Chris Mottola, a Republican consultant who ran Mr. Specter’s media campaign.”

The lesson keeps getting taught, but it too often goes over the heads of those who could most benefit.  “Who” you are is the most important asset a company or a politician has on which to make the public case for a sale or a vote.  Not only does the answer need to resonate (by filling a need or aligning with beliefs), but needs to be consistently portrayed.

Too often a change in course comes across as cynical, as when “I’m shocked, shocked to find gambling going on in here” is uttered by Inspector Renault in Rick’s casino room.

This does not mean no change is possible.  Selling a unit once acquired, authoring a bill that flies in the face of a once sacrosanct policy, a price rise at a time of economic uncertainty, any seeming inconsistency, even “I voted for it before I voted against it” can be seen as principled if it helps extend the story of a strong and valuable “Who.”

Make change a story about growth and the market — whether consumers or voters — will listen.  That is the first step toward leadership.

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It seems that Facebook may or may not have hired former Bush Administration Federal Trade Commission Chairman Timothy Muris to help the company deal with impending regulatory changes.  The truth is, it matters very little.

In fact, the noise about Muris’ joining Facebook and his resume is misdirection. So, too, is the point — assumed but quite logical — that his hiring is all about brokering a deal with the FTC.

A sharper point is the uneasy state of Facebook’s relationship with its users. The catalog of actions that have brought the company to this “point” are well-known. What ought to come next, though, is more than hiring a “fixer” or cutting a deal with regulators. Until Facebook makes privacy an understood and essential aspect of customer service, it will look like any other self-interested company seeking to protect a market, not the rising tide it fancies itself, lifing all boats.

Privacy is not a standard (set by law or regulation) that needs to be met.  Instead, it is a negotiation between customers and the companies with whom they do business.  Just like return policies and direct marketing and affinity clubs, privacy must be formed to support the relationship; clear in each moment, but flexible to respond to changed circumstances.

Facebook is an essential part of its users’ days.  Mr. Muris’ job status makes little difference as to whether 400 million users become 4 billion or 4 million.  That is up to Facebook.

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When the Securities and Exchange Commission leveled its complaint against Goldman Sachs for manipulating the financial markets, it was quickly clear that while the legal and political consequences of the case against Goldman Sachs drew most of the public’s attention, but it was the cultural fallout that would be the more meaningful legacy of the case.

I had the chance to make the point for Forbes. Here is some of it:

“The fuzzy link between a real asset like a home mortgage and a synthetic collateralized debt obligation is hard to grasp for people focused on Roth IRAs and pretax health care expense accounts. By ignoring the need most of us have to see how investments are linked to tangible assets, Wall Street generally, and Goldman Sachs specifically, have given us ample reason to believe the truth of the charges.

This lack of trust will be the bigger problem for the investment community, whatever the short-term legal and regulatory outcomes. This is the cultural fallout, full-blown now but rooted in a pattern of Wall Street behavior that has long defied common sense.

We are all somewhat culpable because as long as we saw our real estate, 401(k) and mutual funds increase in value, we were willing to believe, as the saying goes, ‘it’s all good.’ No more. As a result, what Goldman Sachs has to say won’t be heard until trust is rebuilt.”

The rest is here.

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Forbes took a look at what has become a controversial Nike ad featuring Tiger Woods and the voice of his late father.

Here is how they set it up:  “Golf superstar Tiger Woods has fielded tough questions about his extra-marital affairs. Now the disgraced athlete faces them from his late father, Earl, whose voice-over is used in an unusual new Nike commercial.”

From a marketing perspective, the ad does more than create controversy and the complementary public debate.  It moves the story forward from where it is to where Nike and Woods want it to be — on golf and the stuff one needs to buy to play the game.  I said as much in the article:

“‘The emotional content, Masters’ timing, black-and-white treatment, Tiger’s silent gaze and his late father’s prescient voice-over creates context that demands viewer attention. It has gotten people talking about what comes next. Nike deserves a lot of credit for the concept and convincing Tiger to just do it,’ said John Berard, CEO of communications consultancy Credible Context in San Francisco.”

I might not want to have Mr. Woods over the house for dinner, but I can appreciate the campaign to reconstruct his brand.

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Xeni Jardin, co-editor of BoingBoing.net, was offering a review of the iPad when she set the bar for any technology company aiming to succeed in either the business or the consumer market.  She said:

“When the operating system gets out of the way, when the experience of a computing device is so seamless that you’re not aware of the operating system, all you’re aware of is the information or the experience or the enrichment that you’re after…that’s when you know you have really sweet design.”  She called that moment “magic.”

She may have been channeling Arthur C. Clarke, whose famous laws included this one: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Or she may have merely been channeling the frustration of consumers and business people alike who have grappled with voice mail or gotten lost in an interactive voice response menu or lost hours of work to a system crash.

Five years ago, the Gartner Group, a technology industry research firm, said that the next 10 years would be dominated by a handful of trends that included the “Consumerization of IT.”  More than predicting the rise of smartphones and wireless, remote access, the trend was painted as a danger for companies who resisted.

“As perceptive CIOs seek to transform their rigid, legacy-ridden infrastructures into agile, efficient, service-driven delivery mechanisms, they must adopt a pragmatic approach to managing the risk of consumer IT while embracing the benefits,” said Steve Prentice, vice president and research director at Gartner. “Otherwise, the CIOs risk being sidelined as the ‘enemy’ by their constituencies.”

Now that the smartphone has become ubitquitous (and been given netbook and iPad siblings), now that wireless, remote access has become the Mobile Web and settting aside the question of “who saw what when,” it is clear the market has moved in this direction.

IBM no longer sells software, hardware and services that can be mixed-and-matched, it promotes a smarter planet.  Cisco is not content to sell routers, it now enables a human network.  Even Oracle, born as smart but homely database software, is now complete.

Each in their own way is trying to create magic — letting the audience see the rabbit without worrying about the size of the hat. Companies that can will be rewarded.  Those that can’t will either get bought at a good price by those who can or fall away.

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In a recent bit on Internet censorship by Richard Waters and Joseph Menn in the Financial Times, the easy belief that “China is just being China” gave way to a more complex view of the relationship between national interest and a nation’s laws when it comes to new technology.  Here is how they put it:

“In popular consciousness, the Internet still promises a borderless world, a place where the free flow of information threatens artificial barriers erected by nation states. But the web is fast being carved up by national laws and regulations, whether aimed at suppressing opinion, tackling pornography or identity theft, as countries around the world learn the techniques of control. Far from being a universal medium, the world wide web is becoming balkanised – as users are now learning.”

Just ask David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president and chief legal officer, who along with two other executives, was found guilty in an Italian court for violating — on the Internet — that specific country’s privacy laws.

There are about 200 countries seeking to protect their borders, culture and economies.  At a time when the Internet (and complementary digital technologies) is shrinking the globe to the effective size of a marble, making those borders less meaningful, something will have to give.  It will not be easy or pretty.  And it will turn not on the rule of law or the size of a market, but on the will of the people who live there.

There was a time when the drinking age in New York was 18 and 21 in New Jersey.  The will of the Garden State’s oldest teenagers to test the limits of each state’s laws was abetted by a mile-and-a-half stretch of the approaches and span of the Goethals Bridge linking Elizabeth, New Jersey and Staten Island, New York.  That bridge, like the Internet, exposed unacceptable market differences.

It probably played a small role in triggering a debate that ultimately equalized the drinking age at 18 (the era’s military draft was a bit bigger reason).  But once the conversation began, other voices (and research) were drawn in.  They came to understand the value of a single age of consent but found social reason to raise it to 21.  It was a noisy debate, involving government and lobbyists, students and teachers, parents and social activists.  But it mostly involved people who saw how life needed to change because the world had gotten too small to accommodate certain differences.

The Internet will cause such change at a pace, width and depth we cannot now measure.  China will not be transformed tomorrow, but look at how different the country has become in the last 20 years.  It has gone from a boogeyman to a banker (and still a bit of a boogeyman).

But just like the Goethals, the Internet is a bridge that, once built, leads us to cross it.  And once crossed we are changed.

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Last year, after closing the doors on a technology start-up I had pushed up the hill for two years, I decided to return to communications consulting.  After many years of casual counsel to “start your own thing,” I did.

On April 1, 2009 (no joke) I launched Credible Context (www.crediblecontext.com), a consultancy devoted to helping companies market their products, services, even themselves by tapping into the persuasive power of their own stories.

I am grateful for the support my initiative has gotten from the world in general (my ideas have been given space in the NY Times, PRWeek, CircleID and other venues relevant to the profession) but it is the willingness of a handful of people to become clients that has made a year begun in anxiety, end in confidence.

Clarity, customer value and context will continue to be the hallmarks of success in the coming year.  Thanks for letting me be a part of it.

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At the round tables on privacy held by the Federal Trade Commission, Indiana University law school professor and member of the board of The Privacy Projects, Fred Cate said out loud what long has been silently known about consumer protections based on the notices web sites post to describe their data protection practices and the consumers’ choice to click on or away. Cate said: “Choice is an illusion.”

There is more than a bit of substance behind the bumper sticker.  “The flurry of notices may give individuals some illusion of enhanced privacy, but the reality is far different. The result is the worst of all worlds: privacy protection is not enhanced, individuals and businesses pay the cost of bureaucratic laws, and we have become so enamored with notice and choice that we have failed to develop better alternatives.”

FTC Chairman Jon Liebowitz offered a more basic indictment of “notice-and-choice.”  More than the length or legalese of the written notice, more than the specific liberties they allow, more even than their non-standard  placement, he says “consumers don’t read privacy policies…”

None of this would pose a problem if the cost of violating a consumer’s sense of privacy did not result is real penalties.  It does.  Just ask Facebook.  Or Google.

Charting a new course with more teeth without raising the stakes of consumer participation and offering companies a “safe harbor” will take some doing.  One way may be to focus on encouraging corporate accountability and requiring a specific outcome.  Rather than dictate specific behavior — collect this, not that, hold it for a month or a quarter, require an opt-in or opt-out — government can require outcomes that can be monitored and enforced.  A breach is best prevented by companies focused on customer loyalty, not government guidelines.

While it is best to act online as if you are in public, each of us leaves a mandatory trail of data as we go from one digital public square to the next. The current ability to collect, analyze and link what in an earlier day was dust on our sandals makes the burden of privacy more than our own. If the companies from whom we buy do not buy that, we ought to go elsewhere.

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