In an earlier Blogenberg I wrote about a unique Word of Mouth Public Relations (WOMPR) effort we are undertaking in Pennsylvania coal country. We’ve finished our analysis of the community. We’ve created the theoretical framework, so to speak, for utilizing WOMPR to support social change. Now we’ve gotten to work.

We’ve just finished the “put it to work” meeting, the meeting where we boil the message down to small bites, identify specific strategies, and lay out a timeline for activities. This WOMPR effort is designed to help a community address far-too-many instances of older male/younger (sometimes much younger) female sexual relations — the objective is to empower parents to help youth make healthier, safer decisions. So, for example, one strategy we have developed is the use of “ambassador parents.” But deciding how many “ambassador parents,” how they will be recruited, what they will do and say, how we will support them, what feedback mechanisms we will use, etc. is hard work. Indeed, the entire “put it to work” meeting is hard, hard work.

If you’re engaged in a WOMPR effort and you are facilitating that “put it to work” meeting and you are not mentally exhausted at the end, you’re either not getting anything done that will make a real difference or you’re just much better at it than me.

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Jose Brooks is Blogenberg’s father-in-law. He passed on Saturday. He was a man’s man. Not in the hackneyed American way. I mean in an old-world European fashion. He was French, an important business and government figure in his home. Measured by inches or centimeters, he was much shorter than I. But I always felt smaller than he — standing next to him, looking down I always felt I was looking up. At times, sometimes in frustration with me, my wife says that I remind her of her father. Blogenberg will always be beyond flattered by such a comparison.

Regular readers of Blogenberg know my wife is black. I have often thought of my children as a small piece of Dr. King’s legacy. I’ve studied a good bit about the civil rights movement and, while Dr. King is and will always be one of my very, very few heroes, I don’t fall into America’s penchant for Hollywood simplicity when it comes to this important part of our history, suggesting that Dr. King was the man who made it all happen. But I also sincerely believe that my wife and I would not be married were it not for him.

(Carry Me Home, by Diane McWhorter and Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, by Taylor Branch are, in my view, required reading for every American.)

I put one of those small pieces of legacy on a plane today: my 19-year-old son, returning after a five week visit to continue studying piano and composing at a major U.S. conservatory. It’s depressing to see him disappear through the security gate. And it’s thrilling. Just a sophomore, he’s got a plan for where he’s going after conservatory and beyond. He’s doing exactly what he needs to do to bring his plan to fruition — he’s excelling academically and musically.

He’s carrying Dr. King’s legacy very well. Good job.

As a small business owner some of the toughest decisions center around resource allocation. How do I know what to do in-house and what to outsource? For me, it comes down to how best to utilize the creativity of my staff.

We create and manage blogs for clients. If we decide, in partnership with a client, that a blog can effectively help tell their story to people who will care, we blog. But we don’t do the building of the blog in-house, even though we have the in-house capability to do so. Why not? Because I decided that having my staff spend time on building the blog as opposed to doing what they do best and few others do as well — that is, crafting a story, developing the strategy to tell the story, and managing the storytelling — would be a bad use of resources.

We can outsource the building of the blog for less than what we would charge a client for the time, when the client would much rather be paying us for the same amount of time to manage the complete public relations strategy.

And we are skilled at bringing in just the right subcontractors to whom we outsource specific tasks. For example, for creating blogs we bring in Durbin Media. We work well with them. They can grasp what we want to create for a client. They do it at a reasonable price. And that just makes us even more valuable to a client because we can design the entire conceptual framework for a campaign, bring together all the right tools (in-house talent and outsourced talent), and manage it all to achieve desired outcomes within required budgets. That’s a pretty good talent for us to sell.

I think it runs in the family. My mother lost me when I was an infant. She left me, sitting in my circa 1959 baby carrier, on the counter at the army base PX. She had driven halfway home before she realized she left something behind.

Today, as a parent, I’ve lost three children. And it’s good.

I’m not talking literally. Well, maybe I am. Because I have indeed lost my three children. I don’t have children any more. I’m father to one man and two 13-year-olds, a boy and a girl, who are fast maturing teenagers. I know many parents find it scary. I find it exciting.

This past New Year’s eve my 13-year-old boy wasn’t with us. He was at a friend’s party. I told my wife to get used to it.

My little girl, I’ve lost her childhood to friends, phone, shopping, IM, parties, etc.

The oldest boy, I lost his childhood years ago to music. A very talented musician, he decided by the age of 13 what he wanted to do with his life.

Losing my children and watching what each of them is finding in the place of the children they used to be is thrilling — thrilling kind of like the new generation of roller coasters I’m too scared to get on.
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We’re working on slogans for every aspect of our business. How’s this one? — Rosenberg Communications’ market research: Better than exit polling.

The iPod Touch as marital aide: My wife and I love my iPod Touch. We lay in bed, one earpiece in my left ear, one in her right ear, and watch episodes of Showtime’s Weeds. We spend more time together and talk less. Clearly the iPod Touch (and all video iPods) was invented by a man!

Oh gee, what to say to my twin 13-year-olds about the 16-year-old star of the popular TV show they watch who got pregnant? According to the media, parents everywhere are struggling with this quandary. Here’s what we said to my young teen son and daughter: “That’s why 16-year-olds should not be having sex.” Gee, didn’t seem that hard to figure out what to tell them.

We’re doing a marketing video. Stay tuned — in a few weeks it will premiere on Blogenberg. Of course, I was interviewed. Now I have even greater empathy for the dozens of folks I media train every year. When you go on camera to talk about your business or your organization, something that means so much to you, man it’s hard. Much harder than the hundreds of interviews I’ve done “flacking” for some organization or issue.

My business New Year’s resolutions: market, market, market (interspersed with lots of work for clients that makes us proud). As 2008 starts, I’m exceedingly excited and equally terrified. This is the year we either continue to build on a run of success or fall backwards. We’ve got a big plateful of opportunity before us. Blogenberg fans will be the first to know what direction 2008 takes us.

Happy New Year!