Online Public Relations Thoughts

There are a growing number of incidents in which employees and students use anonymous blogs to criticize and mock administrations, fellow employees and others. This story is one example of the trend.

The wonderful medium of the blog is increasingly a PR problem more than a PR opportunity. Anonymous blogs are a dangerous problem depending on how much they air the internal dirty laundry of an organization. It doesn't take much to make a blog anonymous. Posting can be done to other blogs where one's name stays out of the public and tracing is well-nigh impossible.

Before we get too excited and go on about the wonders of blogs, we should remember that every medium has two sides -- one for good and one for ill. Both develop at roughly the same pace.

There needs to be more discussion in PR about how to defend oneself against blogs.

I mentioned a few days ago I was getting around to reading Dick Martin's excellent analysis of the fall of AT&T, Tough Calls. I've finished it, and if anything, it is better than I expected. It should be required reading in every PR course, PR agency and PR department. Hell, it should be required reading for CEOs.

Interestingly, the key chapter for me is the last one where Martin puts his finger on failures that wrecked AT&T's brand. The first was concern for stock price over the obligation to provide the best products and service. Second, he faults the decline of PR to media relations rather than a way of thinking and operating that builds credibility with publics. (Martin upholds the principles of Arthur W. Page, the first great PR man of AT&T who, incidentally, did not come out of PR.)

I agree with Martin on both criticisms for both have bothered me for some time.

But, and this is a big but, it seems to me PR is no longer the body of beliefs or practice that Page defined and that AT&T fostered. The loss of AT&T paralleled the loss of meaning to PR beyond a media technique. That is why it has been subjugated below marketing in many instances. What Martin appears to be wishing for is a return to the past when PR did have more meaning. Sadly, it doesn't appear that will happen. There are other arms in the corporation now that have taken the place of what PR used to do. For example, Sarbanes Oxley has fostered compliance groups whose job it is to establish ethical principles throughout an organization. Compliance groups have a sledgehammer -- jail time and fines. PR has nothing beyond simple persuasion -- the tool it has used all along.

In an era of institutional investors and demand for a high stock price, Page-style PR is not a consideration. That is why Martin on p. 261 could cite a PR counselor who said the object of the job was to ensure that the CEO "could read the Wall Street Journal at breakfast without developing indigestion."

There are companies that practice "old-fashioned" Page-style PR. I'm proud to say at least one is a client. But they are a minority, and they don't necessarily call what they do PR. I'm afraid Martin's desire to return to the past isn't going to happen -- not for PR anyway. It will happen for other communications and business disciplines that take up principles PR once espoused.

For those still practicing PR according to Page principles, which, I hope, includes me, we feel like dinosaurs shuffling to extinction. The world we live in is less ethical, less concerned about credibility and obsessed with selling rather than service. Perhaps, it is time to say goodbye to a wonderful past and accept a perilous and compromised future.

I like tackling projects where the task is to refute another's contentions. This happened a couple of days ago.

A client asked us to compose an outline of a proof that overturns conventional wisdom on a particular topic. This is a fun assignment because one gets to turn tables, if the argument comes out right.

The first step to getting this done is to line up objections. Criticisms help one think more clearly, but they also outline the dimensions of the argument. Begin a refutation with the list of all the reasons against your position. Then, choose a central theme around which to build defenses. That isn't always easy to do. I chose the wrong theme, but a correct one emerged as I wrote. In fact, a colleague pointed out that the real theme was buried, and I needed to move it to the head of the outline. He was right.

When you are done with this kind of writing, leave it for awhile. I left it overnight. The next morning I numbered objections and checked each part of the proof to make sure I had dealt with every objection. I hadn't. There were six objections in all, and only the sixth was irrefutable. There isn't data to contradict it. Unfortunately, this led to "kludge" argument. It's weak and everyone knows it, but it still appears to counter.

I'm happy to say the client accepted the outlined argument and is writing a final text from it.

I was never a debater, but I should have been. It helps to know forms of argumentation instinctively. This is one area of writing where lawyers should outshine PR practitioners.

This exit interview with Daniel Okrent, the departing Public Editor of The New York Times, should be mandatory reading. The dirt is interesting, but the key to the interview comes after the question, "What are the hardest aspects of the job?" Okrent's response is below:

The hardest one is sorting out self-interests. A person who’s been written about and complains, “I was treated unfairly, and here’s why” obviously cannot see the situation objectively. Similarly, the reporter or the editors who handle the story don’t, because they have an automatic self-interest as well. There are very few things in the world, or at least in the world of journalism, that are purely black or white. It’s hard to conclude that something was fair or unfair, that special pleading isn’t manifesting itself. That, from day one of my tenure, has been the hardest thing.

I'm not sure whether Okrent has reflected on this, but what he gave was a justification for Public Relations. We're paid to defend a client's interest in environments where it is hard to determine truth. Where there is doubt, we defend a client's side of an issue vigorously. When there is clear error, we counsel a client in how to correct a mistake in order to preserve public trust.

We are called spinmeisters but we aren't, if we do our jobs well. As Okrent says, it is the hard to know whether something was fair or unfair. But we strive for fairness toward clients, especially when there is a howling mob that would prefer to lynch them. Then, we hope that eventually the truth will come out, and our clients are both in the right and still in business.

Five hurricanes struck the US last year and caused billions of dollars of damage. So what are householders in Florida and other Gulf coast states doing about it? Nothing. That is why Florida's Lt. Governor held a news conference to publicize a poll that revealed the lack of action.

It is an interesting brand of PR that highlights the stupidity of man, but it is necessary. No one needs damage again like the last hurricanes left. But, householders beg for it if they take no precautions.

What is it about people that they continue to take unacceptable risks with little thought of their actions. There are well documented examples of folly throughout the US, including building in flood zones (a real problem in New Jersey), building in high-fire zones (California) and building in hurricane zones close to the shore (The entire East and Gulf Coasts).

The worst part is that every year there is a disaster of some kind and for the most part, people return and build again.

What kind of PR would it take to convince the American public that this is folly? I think it is beyond persuasion for many. The government should step in and bar people from building in dangerous areas. It is a measure of the corruption of local government that developers are allowed to proceed again and again.

It would be an interesting PR campaign.

The last few weeks I've been noodling a question that may or may not be a problem. It is this. Should companies restructure communications departments around the Web and if so, how?

What I mean is who reports to whom in the organization and how is reporting related to the CEO and the senior level? Today, communications structure in most corporations I know appears to be audience structured. Communications departments are placed closest to audiences they serve. Should it be this way when the most efficient medium in reaching all audiences is the Web? I don't have an answer, and I don't know if there is an answer. I'm not sure it is even a question that needs to be asked.

The reason I'm asking it is that it makes a difference where communications departments are placed. The difference comes in access and power to get things done. A communications department reporting directly to a CEO has more flexibility and reach. A communications department reporting to a Chief Marketing Officer will lean toward marketing and sales. A communications department reporting to HR will have internal more than external concerns. Communications reporting to the General Counsel will be more protective.

Every company because of its place in the market, predilection of management and needs has a different demand for marketing PR, corporate PR, IR and internal communications. But, today, all messages end up on the Web, mostly in the same place. Therefore, should all departments today be in a Web department and should the Web department report to (fill in the blank)?

I'll let you know if and when I figure this out.

I spent a large part of the weekend preparing a database of names to produce nearly 300 merge letters tailored by name and address. The database needed extensive corrections, and it took me about six hours on Saturday to get them done.

I don't find databases all that difficult to build but Bitter Lesson no. 1. There is no easy way to correct a database of names. One must slog through and work down errors bit by bit. With hundreds of names, this is possible in a day or so. With thousands of names, it isn't. The hardest part is doing data entry when one's fingers no longer work well after hours of typing. Suddenly your fingers are spastic, and there are still 50 entries to code. Not a great feeling.

Bitter Lesson no. 2 came with preparation of the merge letter. Suddenly, I got a call and was informed that the group I was working with wanted to change it -- this in spite of having the letter more than a week. I pointed out to the group that we have a deadline, and if I didn't work this weekend, the letters wouldn't get done. I was not happy. But a few hours later, this was resolved, and I moved forward. Get everyone to sign off on a merge letter EARLY, then DON'T let them change it.

Bitter Lesson no. 3. Mistakes multiply. With merge letters, any error is multiplied hundreds of times. Check and recheck text. Think of every way copy can be misconstrued. Look for dropped commas and semicolons. Decide whether all Mr and Mrs are with periods after the names or not. DON'T trust your own eyes. Have someone else look at the copy too. My wife was the long-suffering editor for this project.

Bitter Lesson no. 4 was my fault. ALWAYS have extra printer cartridges on hand when starting to print merge letters. I finished the first run of 60 letters and discovered to my horror that the last eight were faded, and the cartridge had run out of ink. I didn't have a spare on hand, so I drove quickly to Staples where I was informed that it is a special-order cartridge, and it would take one to four business days to get it. Frantic, I drove up the street to the computer store where I had purchased the printer in a faint hope that it might, just might, have a cartridge that I could borrow, or even, one for sale. An elderly salesperson looked about the store a bit and checked the inventory to discover that the store was supposed to have three cartridges. Luckily, we found one, and I raced home.

Bitter Lesson no. 5. Sometimes merges don't work properly even with the latest editions of Microsoft Access, Word and Excel. (It was Word, Access and Excel I was using.) For some damn reason, when Access exports data to Excel, quirky things can happen. I use Excel as the datasheet from which to perform the final merge in Word. This time Excel or Access (I don't know which) cut off two digits of the zip code. I couldn't figure out why, and I didn't have time to explore, so I deleted the zip code from the address block of the letter. One notices the absence but not much.

I got done -- finally, and the letters are packed to go to the group. But, a weekend has passed, and I don't remember what I did but mow lawns and work on merge letters.

Now, if someone wants to make a change on Monday...

My friend and fellow blogger, Peter Shinbach has done a wonderful favor. He sent me a copy of a book that has been called one of the best books on PR in recent years. It is the tale of AT&T's fall as told by insider PR man, Dick Martin. Its name, "Tough Calls." I'm sure that many of you have read it. I had it on my list since it appeared last November but I hadn't got to it yet. It now goes on top of my reading pile.

Interestingly, the author lives only two communities away from me. I hope someday to meet him and to thank him for a wonderful history.

This story reveals one of the ugly truths of business. Leaders who initiate change may not get the benefit of it. They're dumped before the change goes into effect. That is apparently what happened in HP's server business, which is in the process of a turnaround.

This is a reminder that no PR practitioner needs: There is no fairness in life. Perception rules, and the new CEO will get the credit for the turnaround if it is successful.

Years ago when Regis McKenna founded high-tech PR in the fledgling personal computer business of Silicon Valley, he said successful product launches depended on reaching the key influentials in any market. He was right too.

Microsoft has updated McKenna's old technique with its squad of bloggers to preview Longhorn, the new operating system. The more things change in PR, the more they stay the same.

To understand the gullibility of man, visit Snopes regularly. It is a wonderful repository of urban legend and fiction passed off as fact. But, more importantly, it is an object lesson for PR practitioners of the kinds of rumors and innuendo that can victimize any company at any time. Snopes says it best in the business section of the site:

Businesses are the classic whipping-boys of urban legendry, and the bigger they are, the more they get whipped. Seems like they can't do anything right — they're run by people who abuse their customers, cheat the public, commit astounding marketing blunders, mistranslate their own advertisements, and donate money to organizations of dubious repute.

This is worth remembering, especially if you are in a large firm. Snopes is a wonderful resource that every PR department should consult. If you don't have it in your favorites, put it there.

What a heck of a way to suffer a PR disaster -- losing computer tapes of 600,000 employees' information off the back of a truck. But that's what happened to Time Warner, as was widely reported.

This incident is an embarrassing reminder that stupid things happen even to careful companies. It is the kind of incident that leaves a CEO spluttering with frustration and with not much to say. Of course, Time Warner is apologizing and trying to find the missing tapes. Part of the story that didn't help the company was that it waited for an entire month before telling its workers what had happened. I'm sure more than a few feel that the company has broken faith by keeping this secret for so long.

What do you want to bet that the tapes were misdelivered somewhere and are sitting in a warehouse unclaimed? It makes no difference. Time Warner won't live this down for a long time.

I don't know about you, but this person would be terrific in PR. She understands context and perception and how to change it.

I don't know about you, but this person would be terrific in PR. She understands context and perception and how to change it.

This story is an example of why PR should never ignore cross-cultural misunderstandings. The fact that it focuses on differences between US and German reporters is interesting, but there are stronger examples of misunderstandings on record. Take, for example, the US Army's absolution of US troops in the death of the Italian agent a couple of months ago. It is my understanding that Italian journalists are livid, while US reporters appear to be calmer in reporting the investigation of the incident. Truth has been lost in perception.

It is on these kinds of occasions that good PR advice is invaluable.

I believe every PR practitioner should practice a craft other than writing and communications. I believe that for the same reason MBA schools have learned their students aren't prepared when they get only academic learning.

There is a long way between theory and practice and between words and deeds. That is why I continue to struggle with carpentry. In recent weeks, I built a replacement headboard for my daughter's bed and a finger-jointed box. Neither are hard tasks for anyone who knows what he or she is doing. But, for someone who works occasionally on weekends, they were daunting. The real problem is more than a deficiency in skills. It is a problem with material itself. Wood is a living product with variations that came from growing in a particular environment. Even after wood is cut, planed and dried, it continues to move with humidity, heat and cold. To take "living material" and to craft it into an object requires knowledge that most college students don't have and never get. It is easy to write about furniture building: It is damn hard to do.

PR would have more authority as a business, if its practitioners all had more experience with businesses they represent. For example, a fashion PR practitioner would have to make a dress every year. A tech writer would have to code. A medical writer would have to work in a clinic. Not only would we understand better, we would have more credibility with clients.

This is part of the reason, by the way, that companies like McDonald's Corporation requires its CEO and other top officers to work in a restaurant one day a year. Counter duty reminds them what business is about at the bottom.

I wonder what would happen if one requirement for PRSA's APR included regular work in the field one represents.

I was in another part of the country through yesterday in a meeting with a Chief Technical Officer. I kept pressing him for detailed information about his product, and he looked at me for awhile quizzically. Finally, he said he had worked with a lot of PR firms, and most told him that they didn't want to know about his product. All they said they had to do was to get him an interview. It was his job to explain his product.

This was an interesting statement because other agenices had been successful in getting him interviews, with at least one major medium anyway. So, I should have asked myself then and there whether I was making too much of the issue of knowing about his product. I didn't. I told him instead that there are two ways of approaching publicity. One is access -- getting an interview for the client. The other is product knowledge -- knowing everything there is to know about the product -- AND getting the interview for the client. Both are legitimate.

We prefer knowing everything there is to know about a product because our experience has been that national level media dislike PR practitioners who don't know what it is they are pitching. I described a situation to him of getting one phone call through to reporters who are harassed with hundreds of PR calls a week. I had better be prepared, or I've lost my one and only opportunity. I also described our role to him as that of an attorney in a courtroom. The attorney prepares for hundreds of responses from witnesses even though the attorney knows most of them won't arise. What the attorney knows is that they could come up, and one should not be caught flatfooted in front of a jury. (This apparently happened in front of the Michael Jackson jury two days ago according to news reports. But that's a story for the tabloids.)

The Chief Technical Officer appeared to accept my explanation, and he generously spent his time explaining details of the product that had been left out when we had studied it earlier.

But I have to ask: Does it make any difference whether one knows a story well or not? If I can pick up the phone and get hold of a reporter at The Wall Street Journal and persuade the reporter to do a story, do I really have to understand the story? The answer is I don't, but the risk of not knowing is one I won't take personally. If I'm going to put my reputation on the line with a reporter and the reputation of the agency, I want to know the story in detail.

Reputation with the media is a fragile thing. They don't like to be misled, and they don't like to have their time wasted by people who don't know what they are talking about. So, why take the chance?

I admire Richard Edelman and his blog, but he and other commentators in the last day are tilting at windmills. He expressed an urgent need for strong ethical rules in PR and for a better image of the business.

I wish I could support him, but I've been around this block too many times. Long ago after yet another failure of the industry to discipline itself, I concluded there is no chance of it ever happening. The reasoning is simple. PR is a Free Speech business. Anyone can hang a shingle and call himself a PR person. That means the field will always harbor scoundrels as well as professionals. But isn't that true of the law and of accounting? Ethics in PR are what you bring to the table and not what the industry brings. If you act ethically, people will know that you do over time. If you don't, they will know that too. How you counsel clients also will type you over time. If you are a propagandist, you will be treated like one. If you are an objective counselor concerned with reputational issues, you will be treated that way too.

Forget the industry. It can't get itself organized, and it doesn't want to. There are too many opportunities to make money on the edge of of the business. So, sorry fellas. Count me out.

This industry is what individuals make of it.

I won't be in town tomorrow and Thursday. Blogging will be sparse.

If you are not familiar with this site, take time to learn about it. It checks on political advertising and points out errors when they occur. Annenberg is providing a smart public relations service to journalists and concerned citizens. More organizations ought to do the same.

There are some issues PR practitioners cannot talk about. Only a few selective spokespersons can touch them and when they do, even they risk damaging their reputations with the audience they are trying to reach.

This story (Subscription required) about American Black Culture and its bankruptcy is one of those. The author, Thomas Sowell, is African-American and a conservative, which makes him controversial in the black community. His linking of inner city culture with Redneck Southern culture won't make him any friends. But, Sowell can risk writing something like this. Anyone else would be condemned as a racist. Sowell is practicing what I call selective relations.

This story is no eyeopener if you have followed the health care field. It was clear as long ago as 2000 that hospitals and health care providers would not meet HIPAA standards for security. Their attitude then and now is "you can't make me." It is a PR conundrum that such open civil disobedience is ignored by the country at large. If I were a citizen, I'd be mad as hell. But, when everyone decides to ignore a law, there is nothing a government can do.

This is one of the best appreciations of PR that I have read. A client wrote it, and his insight is spot-on. Some of what he has to say is embarrassing to him and to the business. Overall, he is appreciative of what PR can do.

Microsoft has fought against Linux from the beginning and called it the spawn of an evil empire. It didn't do the company much good. In fact, you can call its resistance a PR disaster. Give Microsoft credit. It learns from its mistakes. Now, let's hope the company doesn't try to corrupt Linux with proprietary code.

I have posted a new essay for those who might be interested. It is Marketers v. Counselors: Never-ending Misunderstanding. The essay examines a difference in view that causes friction between PR practitioners and marketers. The idea is not new, but I have tried to look at the elements methodically to examine why the two groups end in such different places. For the record, the essay states that the marketers will do better in the long run than counselors, but there is place for both.

Let me know what you think.

This is a direct cause of this, and newspaper publishers have at last discovered they are members of a Dead Tree Society. There is nothing sacred about a press. It is technology, just as the internet is. News consumers have preferences. They have chosen a newer technology for news consumption -- the internet. To say there will always be a printed edition of a newspaper is an error. Many trade magazines years ago became largely online editions. It's cheaper and faster.

Newspaper editors have been depending on consumer inertia, but the consumer is no longer stuck in a habit of opening a printed broadsheet or tabloid in the morning.

Here is what I see from a PR perspective. Wire service news already is delivered through the internet and few bother to look at it in a newspaper. I know I don't, and I still scan seven newspapers a day. I know my fellow news-junky colleagues in the PR business don't. When it comes to national and international news, newspapers are like the former target market for Cadillacs -- between 65 and dead. It seems to me this will continue. We will use newspapers for enterprise content -- information newspapers have generated themselves that is not available generally online. This also means with falling circulation for print editions of newspapers that publishers will charge a premium for content they generate -- largely local news.

I had written earlier about the closing of the internet with publishers beginning to charge for news. I see no out for this trend. It's that or close the doors over time for more newspapers. As PR practitioners, we go where our news outlets take us and our outlets are leading inexorably to online.

Hand crafts in Japan are honored and individuals who master them are often called living treasures. This site is a wonderful example of a public relations vehicle for Japanese crafts. It is filled with information and examples that will knock your eyes out for quality and creativity. It is a perfect PR web site. You can't look through it without gaining an immense appreciation for the talent of Japanese artists. And even more amazing, there is no effort to sell anything on the site. It calls itself a "web resource."

This is an astute critique of marketing and advertising. What companies forgot, of course, is audience relationships, public relationships... PR.

NBC said it is thinking about creating blogs for its anchors and celebrity interviewers. Hmmm. I wonder if they will actually blog or if some intern will get the task of telling the "adoring" public about the day the "front-seater" had. I hope NBC learns that if you are going to do something like this, it has to be real and not just an empty marketing exercise.

Blogs are good PR tools if they are used as PR tools.

If you aren't "media meshing," start to think about it soon. It is a new technique for advertisers and PR. I can think of a number of ways that it might be put to use right now for PR purposes.

I wrote a few days ago about AP trying to get license fees from Google. AP has gone farther than that now and wants fees from everyone who uses its content online.

Yesterday, I wrote about a reporter who so blew a story that he should be fired. It happened.

The best revenge against stupid reporting is to show a reporter and most importantly, the reporter's editors every instance in which the reporter went wrong. That is why this is a particularly satisfying story. The reporter should lose his job over it. And, the worst part is the article was printed in the Los Angeles Times.

PR practitioners don't often get a chance to defend their clients chapter and verse. It takes an exceptionally dumb piece of work to offer that kind of opening. But even the best newspapers nod once in awhile. Just ask The New York Times.

It is too soon to raise hopes, but this story seems to show that newspaper publishers in the US finally understand that they have to do something about the internet. We PR practitioners should be cheering them on.

This story sounds suspiciously like much of PR, and it's depressing.

If AP gets its way and Google pays for using its news, that will be a second wire service to remove its content from the free internet. There is nothing wrong with AP doing that, of course. It owns the copyrighted material. But, wouldn't you expect other news organizations to follow the example? I would, since newspaper circulation is falling and ad revenue from print sources is declining as well. In fact, in the last quarter, The Wall Street Journal's online subscription edition outearned its print edition. We may be looking at a transition point between print and online news. That means to me that online news will be more expensive going forward. News publishers have to find a way to pay for content they produce. If they can't pay for it in print, they will demand payment online. And, they will get it.

This is a typical disaster when installing a new IT system. For some reason, they rarely go in right, and the company doing the installation has to make amends over and over. In fact, in one of the rare instances where a major overhaul did occur successfully, the CEO boasted that no one heard anything about it.

IT project managers check and recheck everything before plunging ahead, but for some reason -- client changes, poor usability, bad structure -- what seemed to be a simple operation turns into a nightmare. And IT nightmares seem to duplicate themselves. They are never one thing that goes wrong, but one domino that topples another and another.

Being a PR practitioner in an IT company means preparing for disaster as a normal course of operations.