Online Public Relations Thoughts

One of lessons of working outside of New York for much of my career is that I learned about gifted people who work in smaller markets and don't get the attention they deserve. This lesson taught me something I have never forgotten. New York communications practitioners are arrogant about their skills. They know they are the best: They don't mind telling you so. It isn't true, of course, and never has been.

What sparked this thought was a chance discovery of a news column quoting a colleague of nearly 30 years ago in the television news business. This fellow, Larry Hatteberg, is the single most talented newsfilm photographer I have ever met -- and I have met more than a few. More than that, he has the complete package -- a voice that sounds like the thunder of God and an eye for human interest stories that is astounding. Finally, his temperament is mild. He was never the kind to do an end-zone dance when he scored on a story.

Working with him was trying because no matter how well you did, day after day his work was better -- much better. He led by example and not by word. I don't mind saying that I learned a lot from him, and I often wondered why he never left for a larger market or another station. The fact is he didn't, and he has compiled an enviable record and legendary portfolio of stories. If you don't believe it, click here and watch some of the profiles of people he discovered in the byways of Kansas.

I wrote Larry a brief note yesterday and included the section of the news article in which he was quoted. To my astonishment, he called me on the phone and left a heartfelt message that made me feel ashamed of myself that I hadn't kept contact with him.

Over the years, I have often compared my work mentally to Larry's. I have always come up short, but I have never minded that. There are talents who are so much better than anyone else that one should appreciate them, never envy their gifts. When I mention Larry to my New York colleagues, they often smile indulgently and secretly glance at one another. It's Horton again and his unbridled enthusiasm. But it isn't. It's the truth. Genius is where you find it whether in a big city or town. Larry chose the town and more power to him.

Remember Tyco? It is one of the companies that drove Congress to pass the Sarbanes Oxley financial reform law, which corporations and CEOs curse. Tyco's former CEO, Dennis Kozlowski, was famous for avoiding taxes by sending empty art shipping boxes out of New York and for a $6000 shower curtain in his swank New York apartment that Tyco paid for.

If there ever was a company that should have ended on a scrap heap of overleveraged and underperforming assets, Tyco would qualify. It was a Chapter 11 candidate whose reputation was destroyed along with that the CEO, the corporate counsel and the board of directors.

Well, guess again. Tyco today is a healthy firm that is slashing its debt and thriving under its CEO, Ed Breen. The story of how Breen achieved this resurrection already is one for business school case books. But the story also is one of winning back credibility for a company that appeared fatally injured. Breen swept out old management and fired the entire board. He operated short-handed for weeks while he struggled to find the people to restaff a company sinking under debt.

That he succeeded and brought Tyco back to a respectable investment is a lesson that one can win back a reputation, even one that has been deeply damaged. It seems to me that if Arthur Andersen, the failed accounting firm, had similar leadership, it might have survived too.

The lesson for me as a PR practitioner is to bet on the CEO. If Ed Breen ever decides to step down from Tyco, companies will besiege him for his services. Already he is being bandied as a replacement for Carly Fiorina at HP, a position he said he doesn't want.

Leaders make a difference. If a company is failing, look to the CEO for reasons why. There aren't many CEOs who are commanding leaders. That is partially the reason why CEOs stay in office for less time now. The median time in office for S&P 500 CEOs has dropped to four years. Most are gone in six years. Only a few break the barrier and stay for 10 or more years.

One of the key lessons for practicing good PR is to find the right CEO.

Sometimes the most important message one can send is a wish, and if one believes the wish strongly enough, it will come true. Thus the famous quote from Franklin Delano Roosevelt that the only fear the American public should have was of fear itself.

I am reminded of this because of the testimony that Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East gave to a Senate panel on Tuesday. He said the fact that insurgents in Iraq could not stop the voting there meant they are weakening. He said this, of course, the day after a car bomb killed 104 Iraqis, the most since the conflict began.

This is not a political criticism of Gen. Abizaid. I don't know if he is right or wrong. I appreciate his assessment for what it is -- good news designed to provide comfort. In dark hours there is need for bolstering. We must never forget Winston Churchill's speeches to the British during World War II. They were rabble-rousing and tub-thumping, but they were what the people needed. About the only president in memory who could not understand the need for a positive outlook appears to have been Jimmy Carter. He blamed the American public for malaise that wasn't justified. The public did not want to hear that, whether or not it was true. That is why Ronald Reagan with his sunny disposition was the next president.

This is not to say that leaders should lie. They should tell the truth but project command over events. Lying only gets one into trouble. Carly Fiorina won't live down her comment that her relations with the HP board were excellent only to be fired a few weeks later. There is a fine line between too much optimism and pessimism. It takes true leadership to know the distinction and to communicate it well.

The Friday Los Angeles Times (Feb. 25, subscription required) had an interesting story on creative uses of blogging in a television series. The article cited the blog of a character called Nigel, a forensics expert in the program "Crossing Jordan."

What I found amusing is that after decades of one-way television programming, producers have learned it is a good thing to build a continuous and interactive relationship with viewers. Programmers now talk about a circle. Something is mentioned on the air, expanded online and then picked up again on the air. The internet lets viewers get involved. (Isn't that amazing?)

PR 101 calls for interaction with publics to build relationships with them. It's nice that TV programmers have discovered this. But to be fair to programmers, since they have stumbled on the obvious, they are moving quickly to exploit it. Here are some of things being tried in Hollywood.

• Placing program outtakes on the web.
• Placing full episodes of programs on the web.
• Creating "webisodes" of programs.
• Placing backstories of characters and locales on the web.
• Mentioning web sites and/or blogs on the air to direct viewers to the web and its interactivity. (This is what nigelblog.com is doing.)
• Placing interviews with actors and others on the web.

Of course, public relations practitioners can use some or all of these techniques to enhance the reputation of clients, products and services. But we knew that, didn't we?

It's back to work after a week in Canada learning how to ski and sightseeing. We enjoy Canada during any season. It's pretty with the snow and ice, especially in the Laurentian Mountains north of Montreal where we stayed in the picture postcard village of Saint Sauveur. The surprise this time was Ottawa, where I had never been. A more beautiful town would be hard to find, even in the middle of winter.

I had not been on skis for more than 30 years and the one time I was, I had one lesson at Loveland in Colorado then took a lift to the 10,000-foot level where lack of oxygen gave me a dull, throbbing headache as I labored my way down the mountain and eventually walked back to the lodge. To say I knew nothing about skiing is accurate. I had never planned to ski, but my daughter decided she wanted to learn. She went off for group lessons, and I went to a private instructor.

Because I'm a communications person, I was amused by conflicting instructions I received from two French-speaking instructors. They were teaching the same principles but they approached them differently. One wanted my boots latched snugly. The other wanted my boots loose. One wanted me to hold my hands on my knees. The other wanted me to hold them in the air. I kept thinking that there must be a way to teach skiing that delivers principles in one way to speed the process, but then I thought this would not make sense.

People learn differently. The first instructor was into mechanics. The second was into imagery. Frankly, I learned more from the second instructor but that could be the result of practice. (The second instructor said learning to ski was the result of mileage.) In the end, teaching me to ski was a multimedia experience. It emphasized how we as communicators should never rely on one method to send a message. We might be good at publicity, but that is not enough. We might be good at events, but they are too limited. The ski instructors without realizing it provided a case study for any PR campaign.

As for the skiing itself, my daughter learned more quickly than I. She has no fear, while I watched trees, poles and fences and visualized myself smashing into any number of them. I was comfortable at last on a beginner trail when she decided to show me the trails her instructor had taken her on earlier. I noted with alarm that the beginning of one trail had a single black diamond (high degree of difficulty.) She wasn't bothered by that. After all, she had been on the trail earlier. So, we started down the trail then branched off into another. I saw immediately this one was a double black diamond (Tres difficile, I believe the French signboard read.) I was beginning to sweat. Did she see the sign? "No problem, Daddy. Our instructor took us down this trail too."

So we skied through a narrow file between looming trees and came to a wide slope that dropped STRAIGHT DOWN to the lift. Well, not quite straight down but at least 70 degrees. It looked straight down. This was the double black diamond. My daughter stopped and urged me to look at the view. What view? I could see myself rolling over and over to the bottom and left in a heap where the safety patrol would lift me on a sled. O, there was a magnificent scene of the entire Saint Sauveur valley, but who had time for that? My daughter said blithely that we would snowplow down the slope. She had done that earlier, and all I had to do was to take my time. Yup. Sure. She plunged over the lip and began expert and controlled snowplowing. I shuffled after her and watched myself immediately lurch into a three-quarter turn on the slope. My right leg wasn't cooperating and my left leg was taking the burden on the downhill side. It hurt. We stopped two or three times. I could barely stand sideways on the hill. At last, we made it to the bottom, and my daughter mentioned something about how easy it was. I said I wasn't taking that slope again. The next time we took an intermediate trail. Much more my speed.

So now, I am an old man skier. I take comfort in the fact that many on the slopes looked as old as I. But then, they have been skiing since they were four or five. My first instructor was a women in her 50s or 60s who said in broken English that she liked to go "fast, fast, fast." If I can go "slow, slow, slow" and make it down a hill safely, I'll be happy.

I'm going to be on the road for the next week, so there will be little or no posting.

Lawyers have more fun than PR practitioners. They can write scathing letters even when they give up a fight. PR practitioners usually have to make nice.

This thought occurred to me because a while ago, we were helping a client publicize something. Suddenly from nowhere an individual popped up and claimed the client had stolen his ideas. Not only did this fellow make the charge, he sent faxes to the firm's clients and others stating the client was a thief. This, of course, upset the client who immediately called his lawyers. His lawyers researched the topic and concluded the fellow had no case. Moreover the fellow's insistence and faxes had damaged the client's reputation. My client's lawyers sent a stiff letter to the fellow, demanding a retraction and a list of everyone whom the client faxed.

So how did it turn out?

The fellow's lawyer sent a wonderfully written letter that claimed our client's letter was "replete with rhetorical flourishes, overstatement and unsubstantiated claims of damage." He then repeats the charges against my client. However, here's the funny part. The lawyer writes that the two parties could litigate or compete against each other, and it was the lawyer's advice that they compete. Huh, what?

Let's see. The lawyer sends a "Dear Sir, you cur" letter but in the end says let's forget the whole thing. Nifty. You get to have it both ways. I wish we could write like that once in awhile just for the fun of it.

But, we're too civilized.

A former colleague took a corporate PR job and has been sharing experiences that are interesting -- to me, at any rate. For one, the day he started was the day he learned his new boss was leaving. That's a touchy shift. One never knows what another new boss will want or expect. The chemistry and skills that got one the job in the first place might not be the chemistry and skills that helps one keep it under someone else. Fortunately, there isn't another boss in the offing for awhile. This will give him time to settle in without worrying about who comes next. He also has noted his duties were not precisely defined. I find that interesting because it seems to me corporations do better in packaging work than agencies.

Years ago, I flirted with the notion of going inside but never did. That was a mistake career-wise. One should have a feel for stresses inside a large organization. The problem was the PR job offered was so limited that it made no sense. At that time in major New York banks (It has since been merged out of existence.), jobs were defined so narrowly, there was little chance for growth.

Agency life is varied. One practices a range of skills and confronts problems calling for different solutions. But, at the end of the day one goes home and leaves a client's problems behind. In the corporate environment, those problems are there day after day. One has to learn the art of coalition building to get things done and to know where internal levers are. The hard work of an internal PR practitioner, it seems to me, is knowledge of the territory and connections one makes. It is through this invisible web that one effects change and creates good communications.

The former colleague is finding he is performing a range of duties that sound more like an agency than a typical corporate department. He writes that he learned a lot while he was in the agency business and that comes from the varied tasks of client service.

This story spotlights how crass lawyers can be. If you were the spokesperson for Accor hotels, what could you say? I know what I am tempted to write, but it isn't printable. It is highly unlikely that government will pay much to compensate victims for an "act of God," so guess where the money would come from?

There are huge telecom mergers in the US and the market is shrinking to a few large companies with millions of landlines each. What I don't understand is this. The young aren't using landlines anymore. Here's an exercise. You are the PR person for Verizon. Tell me why I should be thrilled that Verizon just acquired long-distance provider, MCI.

I would like to see a PR practitioner defend this idea in California, especially since lower income citizens live farther out to own cheaper housing. If there is an idea that is DOA, use-based driving is it.

There is a horrific story that everyone should read whose client or company has government business. It is here.

The government now admits that two missing computer disks at the Los Alamos research laboratories, run by the University of California, never existed. Yup, that's right. The witch hunt and $5.8 million fine levied against the University for poor security management was for items that were never created. University of California's reputation was dragged through the mud, and it nearly lost control of the labs. Actually, it did lose control of the labs but the government pays so little to manage them that the new manager backed out.

So, how does the government say, "I'm sorry" to an organization whose reputation it wrecked. It sends a threatening letter and fails to lift the fine.

We have worked with other government contractors who have been hauled before the government for lapses they didn't commit. The same pattern happens repeatedly. Bureaucrats rarely say they are sorry, and they rarely admit they have harmed anyone. They find flimsy excuses to support their positions even when excuses have nothing to do with the original charge.

The sanctimoniousness of government bureaucrats is disheartening. These people believe they are doing the people's business. Hence, anything they do and say must be right.

Be warned. If you work with the government, watch your flanks. Keep public affairs specialists at agencies and on the Hill. That is the only way to survive government witch hunts. Even then, it is difficult.

The Sunday, Feb. 13 New York Times has a lengthy feature story on the PR business (Subscription required). The story, "Spinning Frenzy: PR's Bad Press," is even-handed despite the headline. The writer, Timothy L. O'Brien, was careful to note all sides.

The story quotes leaders in the field, all of whom have interesting things to say about the future of PR. Disappointingly, the one firm missing from the article is Ketchum, the company most associated with the hidden payment problem, other than Armstrong Williams. There is a passage at the end of the article, which throws Ketchum's reputation into a harsh light.

"We would assume that the commentator-pundit would disclose," said Lorraine Thelian, Omnicom's head of North American operations in a January interview with PRWeek, a trade publication. "That's an assumption that you make."

"It's not like we were pitching him to other media as a spokesperson," Ms Thelian added, "Whatever he did once that contract was put together, he did on his own."

Since Omnicom made this statement, it and Ketchum have remained silent, a risky tactic given that public relations wisdom traditionally holds that staying quiet during a crisis only prolongs media scrutiny and creates an appearance of culpability.

"They should have come clean right away and not tried to pin all of this on Williams," said Paul A. Argenti, a professor of corporate communications at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. "It's an example of the same kind of bad advice they give their client everyday."

Ouch.

Update: Alice Marie Marshall of Presto Vivace, Inc. found a free copy of the article here. Thanks, Alice.

Call me slow, but I just stumbled on an internet business theory called the Long Tail. It is something Google talks about, but somehow I wasn't listening. What is fascinating about this theory is how it changes economics.

For the one or two of you who still might not know what the "Long Tail" refers to, here is an explanation. With the cost of storing data online nearing zero, it doesn't matter whether you place 10 or 10 million songs online for sale to the public, or every book that is in, or even out of, print (as Amazon does.) What happened as companies did this is that they found as much as 50% of their revenue came from sales of works ranked 100,000 or more down the Long Tail of inventory. These were songs and books that would never be carried in music or book store. But the internet reaches the world, and little-known music and books can find niche audiences.

How does this affect Public Relations. It seems we have to take a longer and larger look at what we do when working with clients. Take, for example, a consumer electronics company. It might make a product that doesn't sell well, and it markets it to just a few countries. As we discovered when we worked for a consumer electronics company, users band together worldwide into their own constituency. A company cannot discontinue a product as easily as it has done in the past when it reached the Long Tail and was no longer that profitable.

Already there have been instances where unknown bands and forgotten books have risen from obscurity to best sellers because an audience found them in the Long Tail and talked them up.

The Long Tail is an economics concept, but it has as much meaning for communications work as it does for business. It's an issue that merits closer study.

The cost of a bad reputation.

One of the great PR battles of recent years was between Walter Hewlett and Carly Fiorina, now former CEO of Hewlett Packard. Carly followed a scorched earth campaign to sell the merger with Compaq, as did Walter to prevent it. One has to ask if Walter was right all along. Carly was the visionary marketer, and no one doubted her capacity and grit to sell her message. Most felt she could make the Compaq merger work, except dissidents led by Walter. But in the end, the merger didn't work, and HP wallowed in mediocre performance too long. The board finally acted.
Carly and Walter's PR battle is a business classic that should be analyzed for years and should be a regular part of PR courses. It shows how different views of a company can clash in public and divide target audiences. In the end, it wasn't a matter of whether Carly was a woman CEO or a visionary. It was a matter of whether her plan for HP worked. The board felt it didn't, and in an era of activist boards, that's a death knell for a CEO.

Interestingly, Michael Dell of Dell Computer was clear-eyed about the merger when it occurred. He confidently predicted the merger would fail and that Dell would clean up. That is what happened. It will be awhile before anyone bets against Dell again.

Now the board says it is looking for an experienced operator who can get HP moving. Apparently, they have had enough of vision.

This story shows what can happen to your reputation on the Web. Maybe these landlords deserved the bashing they got from anonymous critics. Maybe they didn't. Who is going to know as long as the critics hide from sight?

The fact is that this stealth approach is reputation theft, pure and simple. If someone has a legitimate gripe, the person should be honest enough to identify himself. But, people aren't honest.

We worked recently with a similar situation having to do with an author. Another author was aggrieved that our author had written about the same topic as the other scribbler. Our author had not read the other fellow's book, however, so there was no chance for plagiarism. There were some similarities in concepts but not in language. No one, least of all the lawyers who compared the two books, could find any semblance of copying from one to the other. The aggrieved author, however, was having none of that. He put up one of his friends to write a bad review on our author's book on Amazon.com. There is no way to get rid of that review. It's there like a sore thumb, and I'm sure it has cost some sales.

On the other hand, I am also aware of authors who write anonymous reviews of their own books on Amazon.com -- a similarly suspect activity.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I asked a friend of mine to review my last book on Amazon.com, but I charged him to write an honest review. If he didn't like the book, he was to say so. He slapped me about some things before giving me a passing grade. (I deserved the slap.) Still, it would be better overall if no one was allowed to be an anonymous critic of any kind. It encourages dishonesty, and people need no encouragement.

As a PR practitioner, you may have already encountered these practices. There is little you can do about them, but they can damage your reputation. Watch out.

There are no better PR pros than generals and admirals when they want to save a weapons program. They'll do just about anything to keep a line item in the budget. That's why the Air Force is now flacking its new stealth fighter, the F/A-22, which is in big trouble. The service did a Super Bowl flyover this week and last month, the Air Force chief of staff flew it over Florida at Mach 2 to show it off to the press and, of course, to Congress.

For decades now, military contractors and the services have mastered the art of spin to save hardware programs. Most of the time they have been successful. They know what turns the head of a Senator and Congressman. They also have learned how to spread the jobs for any piece of hardware to several Congressional districts so they can count on a block of votes.

We can learn a thing or two by watching them work. Still, I would like to see some of these programs cancelled.

There is a cry of woe among journalists in the US over censorship imposed on TV and radio since the Super Bowl half-time incident last year. There are stories on every side of the issue such as this. What I haven't seen is a discussion of whether sexual innuendo has just gone too far in popular culture. That is apparently one contention of Tom Wolfe's new book, which focuses on college experience that according to other articles, Wolfe caught well.

This is not a call for censorship but for common sense. Sex is just one of many things people do. They breathe, eat, sleep, work, marry, bear children, raise families, get sick, die. I guess none of those are as interesting as "tits and ass."

Sexual innuendo is not a factor in corporate PR work. No one would ever counsel a female CEO to dress provocatively for Wall Street analysts. It would not only be a distraction but a profound disservice to the woman. When then do we push sex in beer and auto ads? Or, if we allow such flagrance for women, why not have men parading semi-nude in public as well?

There is hypocrisy here among young, predominantly male creatives for whom sex sells. I would like to think it a phase that will moderate in time. It has been a long time, however.

Marketing PR is not above using pretty women and handsome young men to make points. Corporate PR and brand positioning are a more cerebral. Both, however, should be concentrating on product benefits more than "sex sells," since we are largely in the business of unpaid persuasion.

Am I an old fogey, or is this an issue on which PR should be taking a stand? No one should advocate censorship. There is a First Amendment and the Victorian era showed it doesn't work anyway. But is moderation too much to ask?

The worst situation for any company and PR practitioner is the situation in which you can't win. Usually companies don't get into this bind as often as politicians, but it's uncomfortable no matter to whom it happens. This is a classic case of "damned if you do and damned if you don't."

The mayor of New York will lose votes no matter where he comes down. Usually politicians kick such issues upstairs. They appoint commissions to study them, and they get the hell away from the complication as fast as they can. The "fig leaf" commission is told to take its time and the hope is the next election will be over before the issue comes to the fore again. Of course, the commission report is filed away in a drawer and never looked at, but it serves the purpose of getting the politician out of a jam. Companies don't always have the luxury of such an out. I have seen corporations appoint investigators to "get to the bottom of the situation," but the investigators never report to the public. More often than not, a company has to take a beating from one side or the other. You can't please everyone. Affirming some relationships means breaking some others.

I'm not going to criticize this article for being obvious, but anyone who has worked with new technologies knows consumer adoption is slow.

Today, we have bloggers yammering about community journalism, and PR practitioners hammering the uses of blogging in corporate communications. But, there is little progress. There are many blogs, but they are a fraction of total internet users. In the end, there is no need for all those journals. And, use of blogs in PR lags where it should be.

In the decades that I have worked with technologies, there has rarely been a time when people flocked to an invention. Even PCs had a slow gearup.

It takes a long time to overcome a consumer's fundamental question, "What's in it for me?" I have scars from trying to introduce technology to co-workers who didn't see how it would benefit them. Months later, they grasped the concept, but by then I had all but given up.

Actually, I did give up. I don't teach technology much anymore. Today, I use technologies that make sense for me, and let others catch up as they will. It might seem selfish, but it works better for everyone.

If this is true, it's dumb. You don't make an offer and not live up to it, especially when it deals with soldiers. You might as well stiff firefighters, doctors and nurses too.