VerveCast

If you’re a huge sports fan (read: attractive, male athlete fan) like myself, you’ve probably heard about the new Braun/Rodgers restaurant set to open in Brookfield in June. The original name for the restaurant was launched as 8*twelve, a play on their two numbers. However, it was announced yesterday the name has changed to 8-twelve.

According to Fox 6, the asterisk was removed and replaced with a dash in an effort to avoid any negativity that might be associated with something that looks like an asterisk, given Braun’s hectic off-season.

Umm, eek! Although I personally find the asterisk situation pretty hilarious, I likely wouldn’t if I was associated with the brand. I’m not sure what would have been worse, leaving the asterisk in to be potentially noticed by not that many people, or taking it out and having the media broadcast why the name had changed. The main takeaway here is to make sure you have all your ducks in a row before publicly launching your new brand.

(Side note: this story totally brought to mind my brother-in-law, whom we call “Asterisk” when playing board games, given his inclination to win using questionable tactics.)

Timothy Westbrook working in The Pfister's studio.

Perhaps you’ll recall a post of mine from a few months back about the search for the next Pfister Hotel Artist in Residence. Well, the lucky artist was selected and has now been set up in the hotel for about a month.

Timothy Westbrook is a talented, young fiber artist from upstate New York who made the big move to pursue the Pfister’s residency. If you have not met him, you should make your way to The Pfister and check out his work, which is primarily crafted from recycled materials such as cassette tape (and even The Pfister’s retired bedsheets!).

Here’s a great feature segment from CBS 58 on Timothy and the artist-in-residence program.

Earlier this week, we hosted a media training session for a handful of clients. We invited the “trainees” out to our office for the full sneaky reporter, camera-in-your-face session. And it was fun—for us. In honor of that session, here are some basic tips to keep in mind if you ever find yourself in the media spotlight.

• Remember to smile
• Be brief and to the point
• Think in “sound bites.” Prepare answers ahead of time as you would for a job interview. Make sure to cover your key messages in your responses.
• Stay in control of the interview. Use bridging techniques to bring it back to the point you’d like to make.
• Open up closed questions by expanding upon your answers
• Never lie or say “no comment”
• Remember, nothing is ever “off the record”

As you might guess, there’s a lot more that goes into media interviews, but those are some of the most important points to keep in mind. And don’t forget to relax and have fun!

Several months back, I wrote a post about an article I read from a reporter on how annoyed he was that a huge percentage of news releases he came across used the word “excited” in their quotes. Evidently, Tim Tebow’s handlers haven’t been following Z2′s blog. Here’s an edited version of a press conference Tebow participated in earlier this week.

Clearly a case in which proper media training would have been beneficial. Or perhaps the media training was too good, telling Tebow to keep coming back to his point? Either way, something was off here.

Anyone who’s a fan of the brand Taste of Home on Facebook, as I am, probably noticed a major uproar this week over the cover of its latest magazine issue. Apparently, the bunny cupcakes that were featured front and center were initially created by a popular blogger named Callye, who, it seems, has many loyal readers.

I guess Taste of Home took credit for creating the cupcakes themselves, either a) not realizing bunny cupcakes were, like, so 2011, or b) by “subconsciously” replicating the idea. But, what’s important is how the brand reacted to the situation.

And after some research (and/or crisis communications help)…

I applaud the way in which this situation was handled, and so do the brand’s fans. Of course, there were still some bitter people, but the majority of them were happy with the company’s response.

All companies make mistakes. Rational consumers understand this. All they expect are answers and a little remorse. They’ll get over it if they feel you’re being transparent and truthful.