Online Public Relations Thoughts

Once in awhile, we blow something big. Sometimes we could have seen it coming, sometimes not. There is no joy when that happens, but there is fear that a client will fire us, that our boss will kick us out, that we will never recover from the bonehead move we made. It is then the temptation to cover up and justify is overpowering. But it is also then that we earn our reputations, if we confess our stupidity and take the blame for the error.

I don't know about you, but I have made mistakes throughout my career and in my personal life. I don't know of anyone who hasn't made one or two. We are human, even though clients expect us to be perfect. In the end, it is the size of error that counts, it seems to me. A typo can usually be recovered. Wrong advice for how to handle an interview might be damaging. Sending inaccurate information to reporters and then trying to cover it up is fatal if one is caught.

Honesty in the PR business should not be the best policy. It should be the only policy. That is why it is disheartening to see practitioners who "fib," use "white lies" or spin truth into something that has little relationship to reality.

Even at the risk of getting fired, be honest about what you have done. Then, don't do it again.

This story from Arizona shows how far a much-hyped project has fallen. Millions were spent on building the biosphere and the publicity was an intense as anything I can remember during that time period. Of course the project ran into trouble and then into fraud when the theory didn't meet practice.

The lesson here is to control the hype when you are trying something new. Acknowledge the difficulties. Undersell and over-achieve. It would have been nice had the Biosphere turned into a true science facility for all the money that was spent there. So far, it hasn't and it may never.

If you think that bloggers are free from corporate interference, check this site. It should change your mind, even if the list of fired bloggers is incomplete or otherwise inaccurate. Those who believe that bloggers should be free from corporate control just don't get it -- for example, the people who sponsor this site.

As long as we are speaking of ethics, this problem is one that software companies should be ashamed of. That a magazine does an annual expose on vaporware shows how prevalent the problem is in the industry. It's not just bad PR to promise what you can't deliver, it is dishonest and a fundamental breach with customers.

The news from late last week was disturbing on the PR front. USA Today reported that the US Department of Education had paid commentator and columnist, Armstrong Williams, $240,000 to promote the No Child Left Behind Law(NCLB) , a favorite of the Bush Administration. The money was for Williams to bring up the law regularly on his radio broadcasts, as well as to interview the Secretary of Education, Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during 2004.

The disturbing part of the news was that Ketchum Public Relations was hauled in as part of the contract to use Williams' contacts with a group of black broadcast journalists to get them to talk up the NCLB law as well. Williams did just that. Here's the problem. Williams never disclosed his contract to his audiences, although he maintains that he told his colleagues about it. If Ketchum disclosed what was happening, no one seems to know that. Now, in my memory, the Public Relations Society of America in its principles calls for transparency in these kinds of relationships.

Needless to say, Williams' colleagues in the journalism world were unhappy about these monetary arrangements even though Williams says he believes in the law and would have promoted it anyway.

It is hard to say how Ketchum comes out in all of this. Apparently Williams was part of a $1 million contract with Ketchum to make Video News Releases about NCLB with Williams the featured person. The Bush administration already got into trouble for doing VNRs about Medicare, so it is certain to get into trouble again with this.

Perhaps no one had an ethical lapse in the end, but it does make a case for transparency to maintain credibility.

There can't be a more basic product than concrete. It has been around for thousands of years. The Romans used it: The Pantheon is built of it. So what can one say to make concrete interesting? It turns out one can say quite a lot as this article from Science News shows. Concrete is no longer the product we think we know. Scientists have reinvented it into an exciting material that does more than anyone thought possible, including bending like metal.

If someone 10 years ago had asked me to publicize concrete, I would have had a hard time coming up with a story about the material itself. Now, with see-through concrete, there are stories aplenty, enough to keep a PR agency or corporate communications department busy.

What's the point of this thought? Just about everything can be made new in some way if one tries hard enough. In the case of concrete it took innovative thinking, but it was done and the result is an exciting.

These are publicity opportunities I find interesting. No one expects much, so they are impressed by what you can do.

This article verifies what several have said for some time. When you work for a company, the company controls your machine and work product you produce. You don't, so watch what you say. In this case, a man was using an organization's computer for pornography searches. The organization allowed the authorities to take the computer and use it to convict the man. The Washington State appeals court upheld the seizure and conviction.

I don't expect many readers of this blog will be downloading pornography, but you could be writing unflattering e-mails about your bosses to friends, or you could be storing confidential data on your hard drive that should not be on your machine. Either way, you have put yourself in jeopardy, if you have done so. Criminal cases that have been made with e-mail evidence have grown significantly. So too, secret company documents on hard drives have a way of finding themselves in the public eye -- e.g. Enron.

The old rule still applies. If you won't want it exposed, don't write it in the first place. PR practitioners often handle sensitive data, and it is easy to become lackadaisical about it.

Don't.

Before you go into that next brainstorming session to come up with the ultimate publicity stunt, read this . It looks at six myths of creativity, and there is a lot of common sense to the observations. There are people in the world of great creativity, but they are few. There has been but one Mozart and one Da Vinci. Most of us make do and that is good enough for clients. Note particularly the comment about creativity and downsizing being PR spin.

I missed this story from last week on Bacon's tracking blogs as part of clip coverage. The way they are going about it, however, seems cumbersome. There must be a better way.

This study from Stanford determined that 60 percent of Americans use the internet now, and they spend more time per day on the internet than they do watching TV -- 3 hours online to 1.7 hours of viewing. If there was ever proof of the need to make the internet a primary part of your communications plan, this is it, especially since one-third of the time spent on the internet is at work. Read the whole summary, especially the part about the internet reducing sleep time. No wonder you're tired.

Since the economic bubble burst in 2000, many businesses have disappeared through merger or collapse. PR practitioners went with them. Sometimes they saw it coming and sometimes they were surprised, as nearly everyone was with the failure of Arthur Andersen, the former accounting firm, for example.

In my time in PR, I have seen a number of companies come and go. Some hit a wall at 100 miles an hour and never saw it there. Others lingered then failed. A few transformed themselves and went on to new growth.

The question PR practitioners should ask if they see that a business is dying is what to do about it. This article is a partial answer to that. It discusses broad areas of concern and the importance of communications in turning around a dying business.

Even though the economy is recovering, more businesses will die, and more practitioners will be shunted out of work. That is guaranteed because capitalism shows no favorites.

As always, let me know what you think.

I don't know where I have been but I wasn't aware of Vmags for college recruiting until a New York Times article from last week (Dec. 30). The article focused on St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, IN. It's a good PR idea to have full-motion video with sound for show-and-tells in magazine form. The system the campus is using is called Vmag from NEWGame communications in Charlotte, NC. Each magazine has a package of four one to two minute video clips of aspects of campus life for prospective recruits.

I had trouble getting connected because I don't allow ActiveX controls on my system but after getting around that, the system is ready to receive 5-minute magazines sent from the college. I will be interested to see how they look, and you might be too.

While this blog doesn't flack products or services, it does take note of good ideas -- and this one seems to be that. I am curious to know what you think about it. Video magazines, it seems to me, have wide application in both the non-profit and corporate environments.

I firmly resolve during the year 2005 to make no resolutions. I don't keep them anyway.

I could resolve to lose weight but that has been a losing 20-year struggle, so I won't do that. I could resolve to be more patient, but I have been impatient since birth, so why bother? I could resolve to do many things that need work and like Benjamin Franklin be systematic in controlling them. But, Ben wasn't entirely honest about his efforts toward self-perfection anyway.

Nope, the best thing to do is to recognize that there are unhappy character and physical flaws in everyone and to learn to live with them the best one can. That's a fundamental part of relating to the public, isn't it? (Excuse me, the public is outside you and not you - Ed.) OK, it is. Still, I'm not making any resolutions.

Happy New Year.

It's easy to say, "Happy New Year." It's a polite fiction, a wish we know won't be true, but it would be nice if it were. What is a year anyway but a societal construct superimposed on the continuous flow of time? The problems that we have this year will be around next year, and new challenges will arise. So will new opportunities. If we are lucky, we will get one more opportunity than challenge. I suppose that makes for a happy year.

May your New Year be one of health and peace. That is as close to happiness as we dare wish.

The disaster in Southeast Asia has stimulated brilliant crisis PR. One of the best is a blog, the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami, that was set up by an Indian student and now has 46 contributors including Constantin Basturea, our own US PR blogger.

The blog has become a clearinghouse for worldwide information on the disaster with reports flooding into it from many countries. The site meter at the time of writing already had 125,044 hits though the disaster occurred on Sunday morning.

Amazon.com switched its opening page to a plea for donations to the Red Cross for disaster relief. It had collected more than $3.2 million through more than 55,000 donations at the time of writing.

BBC News set aside pages for those seeking news of friends and relatives. The pleas are segregated by country and make for harrowing reading.

The internet has been well-established as a source for disaster news, but the scale of the Southeast Asian tsunami has made possible new and innovative uses that PR practitioners will want to study.

Make a donation too, please.

This article from Fortune makes the strongest case yet for PR's involvement in blogging. Read it through, even though the subhead makes the point.

Freewheeling bloggers can boost your product—or destroy it. Either way, they've become a force business can't afford to ignore

If PR's job is to protect the reputation of organizations and their products and services, then Fortune is saying we had better be involved in blogging and with bloggers now, not later. Unfortunately, I don't detect that strong an interest among PR practitioners. It seems as if the blogging crowd talks to itself more than to the PR marketplace.

I find it interesting that in the 2+ years I have been blogging, I have been approached only a few times by someone who is not a blogger. There is a tendency for people to read and not comment, but it would be nice if there were more conversations about PR and its role on the internet. Meanwhile, this paragraph from the article should be a warning.

The blog—short for weblog—can indeed be, as Scoble and Gates say, fabulous for relationships. But it can also be much more: a company's worst PR nightmare, its best chance to talk with new and old customers, an ideal way to send out information, and the hardest way to control it. Blogs are challenging the media and changing how people in advertising, marketing, and public relations do their jobs. A few companies like Microsoft are finding ways to work with the blogging world—even as they're getting hammered by it. So far, most others are simply ignoring it.

Is PR going to fail again to be a leader?

Auto publicity hasn't changed much since the beginning of autos.

What do you do to prove the mettle of your vehicle? Why you take it racing. That is what Henry Ford did a 100 years ago when he was proving the technology of his early vehicles. That is what Toyota is doing today to prove the power of its hybrid vehicle -- the Prius. Ford did it on the ice of Lake St. Clair. Toyota did it on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Ford used racing to sell cars. Toyota is using its record-setting Prius to sell cars.

This is not a slam on auto publicists. There are natural actions one takes to prove the performance of an auto. Racing is one of them. That is why manufacturers since the beginning have entered auto sports for a time. Few endure, because it is so expensive, but there is a cliche that defines the sport and business, "Race on Sunday. Sell on Monday."

There is also a Latin phrase to describe the tactic, "nihil novum sub sole." There is nothing new under the sun.

I have played Sim City off and on for 10 years -- mostly off. The simulation game is wonderful. The process of building a city's infrastructure -- power, water, roads, schools, hospitals, etc. is involving. It teaches the tradeoffs one must make to keep a population happy and productive.

This year, my daughter got the new Sim City 2004 for Christmas. It's not an easy game, and she is nine, but we started working on the city of "Maples." We are already up to 1200 people with a high mayoral rating. Most importantly, my daughter is engrossed and discussing where to put roads, power, fire and police stations. She checks the mayor's popularity rating more often than I do, but then, she is the mayor. She cycles through graphs checking crime and population and pollution with the sophistication of an urban planner.

In the middle of this, it occurred to me again that such simulations are outstanding PR vehicles. One can show target audiences relationships between everything in a complex system.

I'm not sure how one would simulate a typical PR campaign, however. How about the client who is never satisfied no matter what one does? Score a major placement, and the client is angry because of something in the piece. Fail to score a major placement, and the client is furious. Watch your main event go sour when suddenly a news event takes over the media. Scramble to adapt the program. Grab a sudden opportunity and look like a hero. Random disaster and random success in spite of the best planning.

Few would play the game for long.

If true, this is the reason why corporations must maintain control of blogs and bloggers in the the ranks. There is always a group that doesn't get the self-imposed limits one should keep when blogging. This story is a good summary of recent actions taken against indiscreet bloggers.

Note that the blogger at the Post-Dispatch was writing about work issues and stories that he was reporting. That's a no-no that should apply to anyone.

There is an old medieval saying, "Qui cantat, bis orat." That means, "the one who sings, prays twice." The saying came from monks apparently, but it has universal application.

Music is apart and above other communications because of its universality and meaning. Every communicator should have acquaintance with music of some kind -- the more kinds the better.

Why do I bring this up? Because I am supposed to sing with a choir about two nights from now, and I am not ready. I studied music years ago, and I dabble, but I don't sight read well. I'm like a writer learning the alphabet while writing a novel. It is hard to appreciate music when one is struggling through it and crossing other bassos in a chorus.

I've got one more day to practice, and then I am going to wing it. There isn't much else I can do. But it is humbling for a professional communicator to have trouble because he doesn't know his basics. It is one more thing to add to the list of communications skills I have yet to learn. Maybe, by time I'm 70 I will be the complete communicator. Then, I can retire.

Two days before what? Christmas, The Holidays, Xmas, Kwanzaa, Festivus?

Stories this year about "winning Christmas back" from those who want to get rid of the name appear to be a trend. Articles every year focus on the difference between consumerism and the original intent of the season, but, unless selective perception is at work, this year is different.

I have read more discussions about "Christmas" than I recall in past years. There is even an embarrassing story about the high school in my town -- Maplewoood, NJ -- forbidding use of holiday music with religious connotations. Apparently, Here Comes Santa Claus is a mandatory substitute for Handel's Messiah.

The only reason for bringing this up is that PR practitioners need to be sensitive to mood changes among target audiences. "Happy Holidays," an ambiguous term, may not be enough for some people.

It could be that post-election, the media are scrambling to listen to a majority voice. I don't know, but the conservative tone bears watching. If true, it could presage a sea-change in opinion we shouldn't miss. It could also be backlash against overdone political correctness. Either way, we need to be sensitive to what we write and say.

There is a new way of knowing whether you are out of date these days. It is to look at the most searched terms for a year and to realize you looked for none of them, or at most one or two out of a hundred. This list is from AOL.

The Intelliseek list of terms is no better although it is closer to what I would search for. Perhaps I am not out of date so much as I am out of touch with pop culture. If that is the case, I shouldn't be worried. I haven't been in touch with the People Magazine view of the world for most of my life.

True confession. Every six months or so, I pick up a copy of People and flip through it to see what millions read. It is a dispiriting commentary on the taste and intelligence of Americans. But, many PR practitioners make their livings by following hot trends and celebrities. One must not be too critical.

I don't think celebrities are of much use. Indeed, they are offensive when working as political hacks, as they were during the last presidential campaign. Nothing makes a celebrity an authority on American values and beliefs. To have them yammer about issues is lousy PR, it seems to me.

Do your own test. How many of the terms did you search for during 2004?

I have been wandering through classical rhetoric texts I haven't considered in decades. Some parts of Greek and Roman rhetoric I never did study closely, and I should have. Putting students through rigorous training along classical lines went out with the beginning of the 20th Century. But there is a wonderful site that summarizes rhetoric and its parts.

If you study the site, it is clear the ancients were practical psychologists and master persuaders. What they learned over hundreds of years, we relearn every generation -- even those of us working in media that didn't exist when Greeks and Romans declaimed in the fora.

Studying is one thing but doing is another. I gave myself a task of writing a speech along classical lines and then parsing it for readers as a way of encouraging them to look again at the subject. This is the result. I've had a couple of colleagues read it: Both encouraged me to place it online. It is interesting that one colleague told me he hated the speech the first time he read it. I had tried "hokey" effects that didn't work. Overall, however, it appears that imitating ancient styles has merit. When you have nothing better to do, give it a try. You should find it an instructive writing exercise at least.

This story spotlights the fact that faux experts do not fool the media that much. A "Bad Science" award went to a so-called doctor marketing cures and remedies who beat out two so-called doctors with disputed credentials. The article goes on to cite other dubious science claims and projects.

The subject of inaccurate data has arisen many times in this blog and will come up again. Unfortunately, too many PR people fail to resist when data are not clear, and they should. We are the last line of defense against groupthink and marketing enthusiasm. It is our job to ask questions that no one wants to answer and then, to insist on answers that make sense. When we duck the job because we say we are not scientists or experts, we avoid one of the fundamental things we do -- ensuring accuracy of claims and contentions.

PR practitioners who practice "Yazzuh Boss" publicity deserve to be relegated to the lowest rung of management. They condemn themselves. Practitioners who give into marketers deserve equal criticism.

One thing I've learned over years of working with marketers is that few, if any, understand PR. Regrettably too many marketers run PR programs these days as part of integrated communications. They insist on unrealistic messages and worse goals, and PR practitioners feel they must do what they are told. When they do, they give up any professionalism they might have had and become another vendor, a replaceable commodity.

Obviously, this is a subject about which I am heated, so I'll put away the soapbox. But, when I hear PR practitioners moan that they don't get respect, I think to myself that they have earned the disrespect they receive.

I wrote something yesterday that had ring and rhythm. It flowed from thought to thought far better than much of my writing. I was happy. I seemed to have reached a higher plane.

As a precaution, I took it to a colleague who graciously edits my work. He thought it was terrible but could be rescued. I laughed. Once again, my tin ear had gotten me into trouble. I remembered a movie in which a Chinese chef had no sense of taste so he kept an old cook at his side who told him when the food was right or not.

Some write word music, but most don't. I'm one of the latter who picks out one-fingered tunes on a keyboard. Fortunately, most PR writing is one-fingered and doesn't need the harmonics of poetry or fiction. And, all of it needs editing. I have never understood those who believe their writing doesn't need a second look. It's a peculiar sense of arrogance. Even Mark Twain read his work daily to his family to get their reactions.

But I still meet people in this business who don't want their work to be touched. Unfortunately, they are usually bad writers.

This story comes from a college campus, but it shows a bone-headed lack of common sense that happens when political correctness runs amok. I'm noting it here for your amusement.

Everyone knows man-made global warming is melting the arctic ice packs, right? Then what caused warming 70 million years ago before man was around? Scientists from Oxford University and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research have determined from mud samples taken in the arctic that the surface temperature of the arctic sea was about 59 degrees Fahrenheit 70 million years ago. Scientists don't know why the sea was so warm, but they suspect global warming.

Before you think something else, I believe man-made carbon dioxide has accelerated global warming, even if earth is entering a natural warming cycle. The White House is wrong in its denials. But, we cannot dispatch current global warming as strictly man-made. The earth has warmed and cooled for hundreds of millions of years. We don't know which cycle we are in. That is why I believe that PR practitioners should be careful when mouthing conventional wisdom about science and nature.

The effects of global warming are alarming. The year 2004 will be the fourth hottest on record since recordkeeping started 150 years ago. Natural disasters partly attributed to global warming will cost insurers $35 billion this year. Scientists have warned that "a long-term increase in global temperature of 3.5 degrees could threaten Latin American water supplies, reduce food yields in Asia and result in a rise in extreme weather conditions in the Caribbean."

But when you stop and think about it, huge shifts have swept the world constantly. The Sahara Desert was once fertile grasslands filled with animals, which we know from rock drawings scientists have discovered in the heart of it. When and why it became dry sand is not clear, but it happened in the last 12,000 years.

Even if we controlled carbon dioxide emissions today, could we prevent some disasters that will unfold over the next 50 years? It may be too late. That doesn't mean we should give up, but we should be realistic in how we talk about these things and how we advise clients. The fact is that man will deal with climate changes as they arise. Some peoples will move. Some lands will go out of production and some into it. There will be destruction, and there will be growth. In the end, man will adapt as man always has.

But, it would be nice if humans would use more foresight than hindsight this time.

I find this site interesting. It is part of counterwarfare on the Web. The site tells you who is clicking on your pay-per-click advertisements and driving up your costs unfairly. It was started by a gentleman who discovered a competitor was having click-fests at the gentleman's expense.

What does this have to do with PR? Not much. But it struck me because it shows again how the semi-anonymity of the internet can bring out the worst in people. That is a topic about which PR practitioners should be deeply familiar. The web has its share of goodness. In fact, it started with a grandly ideal concept of people helping people. I remember those days: They didn't last. The creeps found the web as quickly as the idealists, and the creeps have been abusing it ever since.

It would be nice if there were a site for PR practitioners to tell who is throwing insults at their organizations so one could confront them but I am not aware of one. So while advertisers can tell who is clicking whom with a simple program, we have to work harder.

The internet because of its massive coverage is an analog of human nature. Sometimes, human nature isn't nice.

A hat tip to PR Machine for this catch. It is a discussion in PR week about integrated marketing and how PR firms are adapting to changes. There isn't much new in the article, but it is good to see there is movement toward cooperation among marketing communications arms to serve clients. One would expect that integration might be farther along than it is. The problem still seems to be yielding of control. Each marketing communications arm has to be willing to give a little for the greater good. That is hard to do. It is usually up to a company's marketers to enforce discipline. I suspect PR often takes a back seat in marketing discussions because it is not considered strategic, and it doesn't have the biggest budget. Of course, the only way PR will become strategic is when PR practitioners think and act that way. As long as practitioners are order-takers, there will marketers willing to give orders rather than to listen.

A hat tip to the Ad Freak site for this one. The McCann Worldgroup site is easily the worst flash and motion site that I have encountered in a communications company. Far from proving how good McCann is, the site shows that McCann simply doesn't get the internet or the web. Check it for yourself.

This blog doesn't recommend products or services, but the following site might be worth checking if you need public affairs monitoring. Customscoop originally contacted me because the firm thought I might be interested in news monitoring, but the site doesn't find news any faster than Google or Yahoo news searches. What I do like, however, is the number of government and policy sources it covers. This area, I believe, is overlooked.

The site claims it examines 7,000 government sources including the European Union as well as 1,200 policy sources including state and regional associations, think tanks and advocacy groups. Because so much of what PR deals with these days comes from political sources, it might be worth watching these areas.

We had a big-name monitoring service at our agency, and we gave it up a few months ago. It didn't work well, and it was slow. Further, it was mindless in what it filtered. When a colleague surveyed the agency to find out who was using the service, he found only one person. Monitoring services seem to work best when one has several keywords and clients to track or large volumes of electronic clips daily. Otherwise, it seems better and faster to do it by hand. What has been your experience?