Online Public Relations Thoughts

Here is a titanic PR battle in the making. Sit back and watch it unfold.

As you know, with the internet customer service is more important than ever because angry customers can get even. Here is an excellent case of that, which United Airlines won't live down anytime soon. Even if the airline decided to pay for the damaged guitar, the injury to its reputation has been done. And, there are two more songs to go, if the airline fails to compensate the musician.

Thanks to my colleague, Mike Cargill, for finding this.

The US Army is testing a way to improve its manuals by using a wiki. It is placing the manuals online and allowing users to comment on them and suggest changes. This is smart PR. It is saying to the troops that they know more about how the Army should run than the original manual writers. Every corporation has policies and procedures that could use the same wiki-style critique. For that matter, every communications department has written and unwritten procedures for practitioners that could use updating. I hope the Army test is successful. It can lead the way for the rest of us.

Apparently no one told lawyers and CFOs that sneaking filings into the Securities and Exchange Commission under the wire on a Fourth of July weekend is the same as dropping a press release late Friday night. The blogger who caught this thinks it might be a one-time aberration, but I bet that it isn't. In any event, it doesn't work because all filings are public and sooner or later, someone will read them. It is not like the news business where masses of press releases are dumped daily with little attention being paid to them. Still, waiting to the last minute to file doesn't say much for the transparency of the companies involved.

In January when the President of the United States was pushing for the massive stimulus bill few were talking about the implications of the debt the country was taking on. Now it seems the media among others have wakened to the fact of $11 trillion of IOUs.

The mounting debt is an example of how shortsightedness can make matters worse. It is especially true when it comes to legislators. The Democratic Congress was eager to spend money. There was something for just about everyone in the stimulus bill. Now, to pay for it they will have to cut, but that won't be easy even with the President's formidable powers of persuasion. No elected official likes to take money away from constituents. Look at the paralysis in state governments where by law, officials have to balance the budget. States like California and New York are deadlocked. It is now becoming apparent that the stimulus bill might not have been such a good idea.

The lesson for PR practitioners is obvious. Short-term tactics and messages are foolhardy, even in a crisis.

Even major news gathering organizations can make dumb PR mistakes. Note that the Washington Post was outed by a blog.

Wal-Mart is marching on its own in its decision to support employer-paid health care. It is a daring move that has upset peers in retail and in most of industry for that matter. But, the company is so large it can take a contrarian position and make it stick. Why Wal-Mart has decided to break ranks is not entirely clear, but it obviously has good reasons for doing so. Economically, with its huge employee population, the company will be able to negotiate better deals for health insurance than smaller competitors.

From a PR perspective, the company's position is forward thinking and guaranteed to put it in a better light. Even if in the end employers don't have to provide health insurance, Wal-Mart will have gained a reputation for concern for employees. This is a huge change from a few years ago when the company was accused of exploiting its workers.

If the airline business weren't as poor as it is now, Boeing would have lost many more orders for its new and troubled airframe program. The company is straining credibility and trust with its customers and investors by a more than two-year delay in building its new 787. It seems that everything has gone wrong from management through insufficient numbers of fasteners and inability of subcontractors to turn out parts on time. The travesty raises a question of how far a company can push its stakeholders before they give up and go elsewhere. Fortunately for Boeing, there aren't many other places for customers to go. It may not be this way for much longer, however.

From a PR perspective, the program has been a botch for quite some time. Boeing had painted a bright picture of the new technologies and materials in the plane that save weight and fuel, but it is clear that it hasn't yet grasped how to manufacture with them. I wouldn't want to be the corporate communicator tasked with explaining the latest delay.