Online Public Relations Thoughts

There will be more of this kind of fight in the future -- a dissident shareholder attempting to remove directors. Under the law, shareholders have more power than before, and they are using it. It is hard for directors to defend themselves, especially when a shareholder claims they have acted "irrationally."

It is unclear whether Yahoo's directors did act against shareholder interests or whether they understand the situation better than Carl Icahn. On balance, one should give directors the weight of better information. However, that won't stop Icahn from blackening their reputations. This is why it is hard to be a director today. The position carries reputational risk. It is also why boards need PR help. More boards now have their own legal and financial advisors. It is possible they will get their own crisis communications advisors as well. It would be foolish indeed to get into a public battle with shareholders and not have PR counsel in the background.

Some news stories make me want to bang my head against a wall. This is one. We represented the client who introduced this technology six or more years ago. No one was much interested then. It seemed too ethereal that one could strap a device on a person's ankle and track that person to make sure he stayed out of exclusion zones. This article repeats point for point what we were trying to tell the world back then. What's the saying? "Deja vu all over again?"

This is not the first time something like this has happened, and most PR practitioners have similar stories to tell. There are products and services that come before their time. They are good ideas but the world isn't ready -- or at least, the media aren't. So, we shake our heads when the world catches up. We wonder if we were persuasive enough, or if we contacted the wrong persons, or if something else happened. There never seems to be a consistent root cause other than the media were not interested. Who knows why they saw no news value then but do now? Some mysteries have no explanation.

One can conclude that bloggers have come a long way in politics when there is this kind of an announcement. It is a PR move for the Democrats but a good one nonetheless. Someone will aggregate their postings to get a blow-by-blow view of the internal workings of the convention. For the first time in decades, the convention could be interesting rather than a staged show for delegates and party faithful.

This article summarizes some of what I wrote recently in an essay on Cloud Computing . It highlights one point -- the benefits of the Cloud are going mostly to individuals and small organizations. Larger organizations haven't caught on yet. There are reasons for that. Security is one, of course, but variability of high-speed networking, conservatism and embedded assets are among others.

The interesting part about this trend is the PC revolution started the same way back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Individuals started using small computers against the orders of IT managers who were protecting mainframes and dumb terminals. It took about five years for the power of the PC to overcome resistance. It will take that much and perhaps, more, for the same to happen with Cloud Computing. Meanwhile, early adopters will work their way through the problems and gain the benefits.

How many PR practitioners will move to the Cloud? Few. Most work today in large organizations with assets invested in large-scale networks. The ones who will adopt -- are adopting -- are solo practitioners with the courage to cut themselves free. There aren't many of those. PR as an industry has always been slow in the matters of technology.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has cut free and works completely in the Cloud. I'm not there yet either. My personal machine was purchased before the Cloud emerged, so I'm still invested in Microsoft Office. The next machine, however...

This is a fascinating story on the power of titles in Hollywood. Millions are spent -- or not -- on the strength or perceived weakness of a movie title. The story is testimony to the need to keep messages simple. The image of people thinking of titles such as, "To Hell and Back," is absurd. But, they do. When one thinks about it, what they are doing is not much different from those who think of campaign slogans -- "Hope in America."

In the end, titles convey the broadest sense of what one is saying and often, readers project their own meaning onto them. I was taught long ago to make headlines short, simple and accurate. None of that holds in Hollywood, or in politics, for that matter. In both environments, a suggestion of meaning is enough to attract people to the movie theater or the voting booth. The suggestion may or may not accurately reflect the underlying substance. However, it is testimony that both movie moguls and political communicators understand the power of a few carefully chosen words. That is a lesson for the rest of us.

Near the end of a hard-fought campaign when victory is in sight, there is a temptation to relax in sight of the finish line. That is one temptation to resist. Opponents can still strike hard and perhaps, win. One can still stumble and lose.

Communications should avoid celebration and maintain the same caution one has when the decision is still ambiguous. Let others, such as the media, make the case that you have won. Don't make the case yourself until you do. The best leaders refuse to believe their press clips. They hew to their message and their goal and make sure their followers do as well. They realize that anything can happen -- and usually does. Hillary Clinton has battered Barack Obama and his own pastor has made his life difficult. He seems to appreciate that it "ain't over till it's over."

Still, it is easy to relax after the rigors of hard work and months more to come. However, should he win in November, the hard work is just beginning. The weight of the office will crash on him with expectations high and disappointment guaranteed because no one can live up to campaign rhetoric in reality. That is why it is never wise to promise too much -- a temptation politicians rarely resist.

How do you go on when reporters have written your death notice, published it and now are waiting for you to expire? This is the challenge Hillary Clinton is facing. Anything she says now will be largely ignored as attention turns to the nominal candidate, who at this hour still doesn't have enough votes to guarantee the nomination.

It is hard to think of a message or medium that can remove one from this dead end. From a communications perspective, it is checkmate. One wonders how her communications staff can get up in the morning and go back to the fever of the campaign trail. My guess is there will be more mistakes made in coming days -- like this one.

There have been other candidates written off by the media who have made comebacks, but it is rare. The hard part now for Clinton is motivating her own people. Her message must be directed internally as much as to voters.

The coming days leading to the last primaries will be increasingly uncomfortable for campaign staff. After months of non-stop work and exhaustion, going through the motions of yet another primary has to be misery. This is one more reason why I'm glad I never worked in political communications.

This article introduced me to a new word (for me) -- yottabyte. Actually, it was two new words, since it uses zettabyte as well.

Let's see. There is a terabyte that is commonly used. That is a trillion bytes. A terabyte is followed by a petabyte that is a thousand terabytes, then an exabyte, which is a thousand petabytes followed by zettabytes then yottabytes, which equal 1000 to the 8th power. Got that?

What is worrisome about this? The world is storing so much information now that we are closing in on a society where the detailed lives of individuals and organizations will be on record forever. The more data there is to explore, the more past mistakes can return to haunt the present. Preserving reputation will be more than a forward-looking task but an archival one as well. "Sure, we made mistakes in the past but we did good things then too."

There haven't been many organizations to date that have had to defend their pasts as much as their present. One group does come to mind -- German companies that served the Nazis during World War II. Their past behavior continues to haunt the present.

While it is unlikely that most companies will have deep stains in their histories, it is likely with changing societal mores that records of past activity will be interpreted negatively in the present. We have seen that often enough in the matters of environmental responsibility, for example, or the treatment of women and minorities.

Is it possible that companies will need keepers of archival reputation?