Scatterbox at StevenSilvers.com

Contributed content media: All the news that fits for free

2012-01-30T19:46:08-07:00

The other day I received an unsolicited email from an online news site that covers the alternative energy industry. The editor said he was "running a series of stories on innovative companies," and asked if we could whip up something in answer to these questions:

What is your organization's background?
How has it changed over time?
What are its main products and services?
Who are some of its biggest customers and how did the company attract them?
How does your organization differentiate itself from its competition?
What are your organization's biggest challenges?
What are Your organization's plans for the future?
Could you please include two or three images (or could we have permission to reprint images from your website) to run with the story?
Who should we attribute these answers to?

It was one of those let-me-get-this-straight moments: A guy I've never met from a web site I've never heard of asks us to write a company profile, complete with pictures and secrets of success.

I chuckled at the audaciousness of the emailer's incredulous request, my husky finger hurling like Thor's hammer toward the delete button. (The previous sentence thus illustrating that I can write good if I need to.)

Then it occurred to me. True, these media sites that trade mainly in company press releases and contributed articles aren't legitimate news sources. Yet they flourish like unchaperoned bunnies on a summer afternoon.

It's easy to see why.

For the many PR people who submit material, it's easy publicity – another link to include in the media coverage report and to repost on the company's web site. It doesn't matter that nobody's ever heard of the outlet, as long as it sounds legit.

For the online news sites, it's easy revenue – a way to sell click-through advertising by creating web pages filled up with free content. Beats having a newsroom full of real reporters who want stuff like paychecks and office furniture.

In the end everybody's making money thanks to one of the Internet's most disingenuous contributions to the information age: Advertorials masquerading as journalism masquerading as news media.

And now my determined digit hits the delete button.
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Anarchy with formatting: Another big brand gets its buns Twittered

2012-01-25T15:55:36-07:00

It’s amazing, really. Another hugely successful brand launches a “social media campaign” only to be pummeled by activists, ex-employees and consumers who plain loath everything about the company.

That’s what happened to McDonald’s, which after only on hour pulled the plug on a Twitter promotion the company thought would “highlight the hard-working people who help to produce its meals and promote the chain’s use of fresh produce.”

McDonald’s paid-for Tweeter service posted just two items, the last one being from someone supposed to be a fry supplier who said, "When u make something w/pride, people can taste it.” And that did it.

Within minutes McD’s happy-joy-joy patter was hijacked by people claiming to have gotten sick by eating their food, animal rights groups accusing the company of torturing pigs and workers who said they were wrongly terminated. And – always the cherry on any PR disaster cake – the news media made sure to report on McDonald’s misfire.

It’s an embarrassing lesson learned every day by some company somewhere:

Social media is an unruly street corner. Not a billboard on the highway.

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I'm back.

2012-01-25T15:48:35-07:00

Almost eight of my 12 readers noticed that Scatterbox at StevenSilvers.com has been on hiatus for the last three months. While I never did clean the garage, I got some ideas. I'm back and postin'.

As always, send good stuff to me at scatterbox@stevensilvers.com.

Hype, hoopla and the marketing of breaking news that delivers nothing

2011-11-16T13:15:03-07:00

At some point, media companies are going to get it that teasing breaking news is bad for business.

In the meantime we’ll still have local stations across the country peppering the evening’s sitcoms with promos like these:

“Will the most dangerous blizzard in recorded history hit the city tomorrow morning? We’ll tell you on ActionNews5 at ten!”

It’s pathetic really. Does the plastic-looking anchorman not realize that we already know the weather from a million Internet sites? Or that we’ve already received a dozen alerts from our iPhone weather ap? Or that we can turn to the Weather Channel?

Teasing breaking news is one of those Eisenhower-era mass media advertising gimmicks that worked when people had no choice but to wait for the day’s broadcast or tomorrow’s newspaper to find out what was going on. Imagine this notion now: That tens of millions of Americans simultaneously would give their attention to a small handful of news outlets to get the headlines, sometimes hours after the fact.

So why is it still happening?

Because – perhaps ironically -- breaking news is still the lifeblood currency in today’s always-on, 24-hour news cycle. There are more news outlets than ever, but they cover fewer stories. They’re thinner, with smaller news holes and fewer reporters to create original content. So they compete on headlines, on being the first to deliver what everyone else will have minutes or seconds from now.

The race to be first is why news organizations often act like those stereotypical cigar-chomping sensationalists in the old movies. It's why CBS is getting heat for hyping its “exclusive interview” (above) with Penn State assistant coach Mike McQuery, a central figure in the university’s child sex scandal.

CBS went all out to promote the exclusive. Its stations, social media and web sites shouted "BREAKING: Penn State's Mike McQueary speaks for first time since abuse scandal broke." The reporter promised that “Tonight on Evening News Mike McQueary breaks his silence and opens a window for me into his emotions.”

Here’s what viewers got:

CBS Exclusive Breaking News Reporter: "Do you have any idea when you think you might be ready to talk?"

Mr. McQueary: "This process has to play out. I just don't have anything else to say."

CBS Exclusive Breaking News Reporter: "Yeah ... OK ... and then just one last thing, just describe your emotions right now."

Mr. McQueary: "All over the place, just kind of, uh, shaken."

CBS Exclusive Breaking News Reporter: "Crazy?"

Mr. McQueary: "Crazy."

CBS Exclusive Breaking News Reporter: "And you said what, like a ..."

Mr. McQueary: "Snowglobe."

CBS Exclusive Breaking News Reporter: "Like a snowglobe."

Mr. McQueary: "Yes sir."

CBS Exclusive Breaking News Reporter: "All right."

So basically CBS hyped a 24-second “no comment” that lasted as long as some of its promos.

Lesson learned? Hardly. Other media outlets fell over themselves to break the news of what the CBS Exclusive Breaking News Reporter said to his critics (that his competitors would have done the same thing).

This circus will go on for a long time to come.

And more than two-thirds of Americans will continue to have no faith in what media is trying to sell them.
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Best blogs for college PR students

2011-11-11T11:19:11-07:00

Education resource site Bachelors Degree Online included StevenSilvers.com as one of the 50 Best Blogs for the Public Relations Major.

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Penn State’s response to scandal underscores the uselessness of many crisis communications plans

2011-11-09T11:49:50-07:00

For days the sexual abuse scandal broke, Penn State University did not put forward a single human being – leadership or spokesperson -- to answer questions from media and the public.

This breaks every rule of modern crisis communications. As an institution, Penn State knows this. The university is home to the prestigious Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communications. It has a College of Communications.

It puts on conferences on crisis communications, like the one in 2009 where an expert told agriculture people that speed of response is critical to maintaining credibility and trust (picture). There's also a 2006 Penn State draft crisis communications plan floating around the Internet.

So what happened?

How did Penn State make its situation far worse by violating one of the most basic tenets of crisis management?

We can assume that its crisis plan doesn't have a section titled, "Allegations of Sexual Abuse of a Minor By An Official and Related Perjury Or Inaction By Other Officials Who Had Information." Or maybe there are guidelines but those went out the window when the president promised "unconditional support" for two of the people involved. Maybe the board was never coached in how to use the plan. Maybe they've never seen a crisis plan at all.

Perhaps lawyers convinced the university to hunker down. Or maybe somebody thought any backlash from stonewalling the press would be mitigated by whatever action they're planning to take. Maybe it's happening too fast. Maybe there's lack of consensus.

Hard to say.

All we know is that Penn State has taken the position to not address the public in real time.

Make no mistake about it. Penn State's communications is a crisis in and of itself, one that will add months of life and millions of dollars to the situation. People are going to lose their jobs.

The lesson here is not that your company or university needs a crisis communications plan.

The lesson from Penn State is that your crisis plan is useless if it hasn't established how you will respond to situations nobody saw coming. That includes horrible acts and cover-up by people in positions of trust.

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Proving again the Internet’s infinite capacity to add meaning to our world

2011-11-08T11:05:28-07:00

Put down that New York Times, inquisitive and engaged citizen. The Weather Channel has launched its own Twitter-powered social media site where you can "See what people are saying about the weather across the U.S.!" Imagine the conversation you're missing right now...

Don't just let the weather happen. Be happenin' with the weather.
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Social networking within an educational curriculum

2011-11-01T10:50:29-06:00

Guest column by Lindsey Wright

Networking used to be a term used once a person entered the workforce. It was a way of making connections to others in the field that could help a person grow or expand their career.

Now, networking is social media. The popularity of this form of communication is not only apparent in online courses offered by virtual colleges, but it is all over the Internet. Social media provides opportunity for students to learn from their peers and find alternate means for research. They're provided an extensive set of tools to advance educational experiences and obtain numerous positive results. This concept applies to communication, psychology, media and marketing for people of all ages and professions.

Education students are benefiting from the use of social media as applied to formal curriculum. Christine Greenhow, researcher at the University of Minnesota stated "by understanding how students may be positively using these networking technologies in their daily lives and where the as-yet-unrecognized educational opportunities are, we can help make schools even more relevant, connected, and meaningful to kids."

For example, critical thinking becomes an absolute necessity to navigate through the extensive amount of information accessible online. Without critical thinking a student could be easily persuaded that sites like Wikipedia always offer reliable information. Alternatively, "students are developing a positive attitude towards using technology systems, editing and customizing content, and thinking about online design and layout. They're also sharing creative original work like poetry and film, and practicing safe and responsible use of information and technology. The web sites offer tremendous educational potential" explains Greenhow.

With the aid of socialization on websites like Facebook, an open forum for all ages can provide the chance for students and professors to discuss and compare thought processes about media stories and its prevailing influence over the masses. Most importantly, social media presents an opportunity for blogs to be shared with an entire educational environment for students, faculty and even parents.

Brian Kievit for example, a middle school science teacher, has interested students in problem-solving activities via social networking. Eighth grade students chose a local menace, Buffelgrass, and then warned locals of the horror of this "plague-like weed" and took action via social media.

The positive effects of social networking related to the educational experience of students of all ages, including college level learners is immense. From marketing an opinion to communicating effectively, social networking provides positive experiences for students and educators alike when a balanced curriculum is implemented.

Lindsey Wright is a writer for onlinecollegeclasses.com, an Internet directory of free education, lectures and classroom sites.

Read this before you send that resume cover letter

2011-10-19T10:34:00-06:00

Dear people wanting an entry-level PR job:

Thanks for your interest. We’re thrilled that so many of you visited our firm's web site. Those of you who didn’t should consider a different career. Or go work for one of our competitors.

You all have nice resumes. That’s expected. But we read your cover letter first. This was your chance to tell us why we should be interested in you versus the 90 other people who also want this job.

Unfortunately, many of your cover letters were poorly thought out and badly written. Several were stunning in their awfulness.

Next time you submit your resume somewhere, make sure your cover letter doesn’t get you rejected because of mistakes like these:

No-brainer personality traits. You love working with people? Excellent. This puts you above all the PR job candidates who love working with farm animals.

Hyphenation hate. If your letter reads that “I’m a first class writer with an all out attitude ready to work for a top notch company,” you’re not and you won’t.

Redundant hyperbole over and over. If you use the word passion more than five times, you’re mostly passionate about not using a thesaurus.

A firm and wordy grasp of the obvious. We don’t know if you’re sucking up or if you honestly think we’re impressed by you telling us that “It requires a lot of hard work and an exceptional team of employees for a business to become and remain successful.” Leave the bromidic insights to us pros.

Missing something important. One letter we received was 400 words long and didn’t mention our company once.

A wrong view of how the working world works. We know you want things out of life. We also know we don't want self-absorbed newbies who says things like: “After significant research into your company, I have decided that this position offers me an excellent opportunity to gain valuable experience in a career area in that I am interested in.”

One more thing. You're not writing a novel. If we have to go to the bathroom in the middle of reading your letter, it’s too long.

Good luck out there.

Steve
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Also: Five things all PR students should know about their choice of career

(Originally posted in 2010.)

Five things all PR students should know about their choice of career

2011-10-18T11:16:40-06:00

1. Most PR people don't write well. This includes old flacks who've been around since Adam announced his new fig leaf attire. You will leapfrog ahead of your peers if you can explain complicated situations or argue positions in writing. Really. Make writing your priority.

2. You don't have exclusive access to this profession. PR people come from everywhere: journalism, law, marketing, psychology, finance, catering, politics or on the advice of their parole officers. Your degree is worth only what you make out of it with your intuitiveness and applied skills. Be aware that public relations is more and more a collection of specialized fields.

3. PR is not the end result of itself. The world is full of publicists and social media tacticians who think the whole point is to pump out materials, get publicity or Tweet Tweets. It isn't. If what you're doing isn't making a difference — selling product, improving opinion, increasing share price, building support, winning the vote, etc. — then you're just adding to the clutter. Your career will have no more meaning than a sticky note. Strive to be relevant.

4. There's too much sleaze in this business. Decide right now that you're not going to be one of those flacks who rationalizes bad behavior, lies to the press, creates fake grassroots organizations or attacks the integrity of people with legitimate issues against your employer or client. It doesn't matter whether you're in corporate, government or marketing. You don't have to sell your soul to be an effective at communications and influence.

5. Detailed grunt work gets you promoted. It's great that PR students study the Tylenol crisis. But most of you will have less dramatic introductions to the profession. You'll spend your day compiling research, stuffing envelopes, proof-reading someone else's material and taking notes. The sooner you prove that you don't make mistakes or let things fall through the cracks, the sooner you'll get thrown into the more interesting deep end. Invest your time in becoming indispensible. Most of your peers won't.
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Also: Read this before you send that resume cover letter

A chance to work with people like me and enjoy free Sweet‘N Low, too.

2011-10-10T15:36:57-06:00

Denver-based GBSM is looking for a bright vim-and-vigor type to join one of the world's truly fine little management consulting and strategic services firms. You'll need three to five years experience in the corporate communications, issues management and public affairs arenas. Smarts about the energy and cleantech would help. You must write well, period.

See all the details at Andrew Hudson's Jobs List. If interested, please send your resume and charming cover letter to Raleigh Decker at raleigh@mycareerinsight.com.
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Sweet 'N Low is a registered trademark of Sweet'N Low® Zero Calorie Sweetener, which is provided proudly at no cost to associates and visitors of GBSM, Inc. Please enjoy responsibly.

Metro Denver’s newspaper crisis is a matter of will

2011-10-10T10:31:44-06:00

The Denver Post intends to cut its newsroom by another eight percent.

One reporter told a client of mine that it's "hard to figure how we'll still put out a semi-credible product."

Business and civic leaders around the region are frustrated. "We got used to not having Denver Post or Rocky Mountain News reporters at city council meetings a long time ago," one mayor told me. "But now they're barely covering the city election or anything else, either. What's infuriating is that people tell me all the time that they want a good newspaper, that they'd pay more for local coverage."

What you hear from a lot of media people around Denver, though, is that the newspaper is a lost cause. They insist that there's no "business model" to sustain revenue.

Repeat that: There's no business model for a daily newspaper with an established brand, talented reporters and a virtually exclusive relationship to a metropolitan area of 2.5 million people.

You have to say this over and over before you believe it. Because it's bull.

There's a big difference between not having a business model and there not being one.

Consider all the media choices that capture today's eyeballs and eardrums. Now look at the Denver Post and DenverPost.com. Are they the best products they could be? Do they strive to be compelling and relevant, day in and day out?

Or are they tired vestiges of Eisenhower-era, mass-market display advertising and classifieds thinking?

I hate to sound like a motivational poster. But what's keeping the Denver Post from succeeding in the information age is the Denver Post.

"The tradition-bound and risk-averse nature of the newspaper culture is the single greatest reason publishers are losing readers and revenues while competing digital products run circles around them," wrote Alan D. Mutter, a former Silicon Valley CEO who teaches media economics at the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. "Newspapers need some fresh DNA that will make them think and act more like techies and less like, well, newspaper people."

You want to turn things around, Denver Post?

Then change.

And do it now.

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Follow me on Twitter at StevenSilversPR

2011-10-07T15:49:31-06:00

My prediction that Twitter will eventually wither and die does not mean that I’m not eager to exploit it for all it’s
worth. I’m still a professional public relations professional.

Follow me on Twitter at StevenSilversPR.
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You realize that Twitter is to PR what men’s room graffiti is to advertising, right?

2011-10-06T16:16:40-06:00

Like most Americans, I get hit with some 5,000 marketing messages daily. Most I don’t notice. There’s no way I could. You'd need more than four hours a day even if you spent on average only three seconds considering every ad, logoed item and pitch. (And they said PR bloggers can’t do math.)

Yet the other day I spent a few seconds reading an email alerting me that I’m being followed by a guy who says, “I Help Individuals to Improve Their Immune System, Wellbeing & Fitness And To Build Wealth Online From Home.”

As I hit the delete button it occurred to me that this Twitter thing is pretty amazing.

With all the competition for eyeballs and eardrums, Twitter manages to push ads and publicity right into people’s face. I gave a valuable sliver of my limited attention to a promo just because he clicked on my follow button.

Does this hyper-intrusiveness mean Twitter will be around forever? Hardly.

It happened with AOL and other Internet phenoms. Twitter will eventually ripen, rot and fall off the tree from the weight of its own success. Teens already don’t use it, and the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters were using Vibe, a more private short-message service.

Today only eight percent of Americans use Twitter. This isn't many. It’s less than the number of Americans who think the Earth revolves around the sun. (Ten percent, but I’ve known the truth for weeks.)

Overlay the Twitter-ers with the Earth-firsters, minus the number of Tweets that are useless or incoherent -- and you have a phenomenal but narrowly-used Internet novelty destined for the history books.

You can’t argue with PR blogger math.
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Five ways to establish social media credibility

2011-10-03T12:34:22-06:00

Guest post by Hoa Cong

Most corporations are looking to social media as a vibrant platform to increase sales and profits. However, you can't just open a Facebook account or blog and expect people to come flocking in. You have to actually connect with your customer base and create relationships.

Here are five critical elements that can make or break your social media campaign:

Choose your platforms wisely. Social media extends far beyond Facebook. Find out where your customers are on the internet and go there. If you sell to creative types, set up a blog where users can contribute content. For sports types, try an interactive game. The possibilities are endless, and a company that fails to do its homework is destined for failure.
Speak your customers' language. Every group has its own language and acronyms. To market to them, you must also speak this language, especially in social media environments. The best way to learn to do this is to read the blogs, Facebook pages and other sites that are created by your clients and customers. When you use -- note: not overuse -- the correct language, you gain instant credibility.
Keep a cohesive message. The fastest way to lose people is to have too many messages across online platforms. Remember that your customers use multiple social media venues themselves, as well as traditional media. Integrate your message across all so your customers see you as the focused company you are.
Be active in your chosen forums. Your blog, Facebook page or other platforms are not simply advertisements to lure in customers. Social media is interactive by nature, and you'll lose credibility if you're not active in posting, giveaways and two-way communication. People can sniff out fakes, and it will cost you.
Let your customers give input. People who engage in social media expect to be able to interact with you, but also to be heard. Campaigns where customers can submit ideas for new products, advertising, or slogans can bring considerable traffic and give your customers a sense of participation in your product. When they feel like part of your group, they are much more likely to recommend and use your products.

For the today's companies, the only thing worse than not engaging in social media is to do it poorly. As the guidelines suggest, a cohesive message delivered in a truly interactive environment will bring out the most value of your online campaign.

Hoa is a representative for Capterra, an extensive online catalog of more than 300 business software directories.
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Simply put: The difference between brand and reputation

2011-09-27T19:49:44-06:00

I get this question often: What's the difference between a company's brand and its reputation? Aren't they just different words that public relations and ad people use to say the same thing?

Nope. Closely related, but very different.

A brand is a company's promise to the people and institutions most important to its success in the marketplace of products, services and ideas. It is the (usually) carefully constructed embodiment of what the company wants its stakeholders and their influencers to believe to be true.

A company's reputation, on the other hand, belongs to those stakeholders and influencers. It is their collective perception based on what they in fact believe to be true about the company: its integrity and credibility, its alignment with their own values, its historic and future ability to deliver on the brand promise.

Whether a company's reputation is justified or not, the stakeholders own it. Smart companies own up to it when it's damaged by screw-ups and controversy, real or perceived.

Properly managed as a bona fide strategic asset, a strong corporate reputation multiplies every dollar spent. It strengthens the brand like steroids on steroids. It creates goodwill that helps the company navigate through bad market conditions, complex issues and crises.

It helps consumers answer the "why buy" question by answering the "why trust" question.

Reputation is why most of today's good companies have a market cap of 30 to 70 percent more than their book value.

Brand is how the company talks to the world. Reputation is how the world hears the company.

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How Afghanistan must get its message across to U.S.

2011-09-26T21:07:06-06:00

I was invited to attend a small gathering of Afghanistan officials in the U.S. to explore the working relationship between our government and news media. We were struck by what one senior member of the delegation said was his group's biggest surprise:

"We thought that the United States had in-depth information, that there was great knowledge among the American population about Afghanistan. But we find the opposite is true, that people of the U.S. seem to have no information about Afghanistan and its people."

He's right. Research shows that Americans – including many political leaders – know very little about foreign affairs. Despite fighting there for ten years, Afghanistan for most Americans is an abstractly convoluted mess of wars and radicals, confusing policies and political posturing.

The Afghan official's observation underscores an important question. What's the bigger dilemma: That Americans are largely oblivious about a country in which they spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives? Or that many leaders in that country think Americans know far more about their people and problems than they actually do?

Obviously neither situation is acceptable. In the short term, however, it seems critical for Afghanistan's official communicators – the people who must make their government a credible source of truth – to get the idea across that America's citizenry does not operate from a position of universal, much less accurate, understanding.

It is up to America to understand Afghanistan's strategic relevance to the nation's future. Our ignorance is costing lives. We know that.

But it is up to Afghanistan to earn that relevance. This is the message that its leadership and pro-democracy media must communicate. They must convey to their people that only the credibility of action will rise above the deafening clutter of American mass media, to deliver the message that Afghanistan is committed to become a nation of rights, and that it has the resources to pay its own way if given the ability.

Show, don't tell. This is how you get the attention of ignorant Americans.
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(Photo: Afghanistan's Ministry of Information and Culture behind barbed wire.)

Note to self: Just post the dang thing.

2011-08-31T21:56:50-06:00

Dorothy Crenshaw offers some good advice on not procrastinating in a post that I'm going to read tomorrow.
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Padding the death count and other natural disasters of hype

2011-08-28T23:13:50-06:00

Hurricane Irene was plenty terrible. But reasonable people started sensing that things were overstated when
headlines heralding the storm's rising "death toll" included a North Carolina man who died of a heart attack while nailing up plywood.

The literal overkill was inevitable. Hurricane Irene was the perfect storm of hype, an approaching disaster fueled by the hot air rising from the national media and political epicenters that lay directly in its path.

For the cable networks this was a once-in-a-career relevancy, a chance to glue their logos forever to the bottom right corner of Armageddon. For politicians at the door of a campaign season, it was as opportunity to show big-time leadership, to hurry millions of people off the beach in advance of seeing themselves standing in shirtsleeves on the wet ruins, bullhorns and bully in hand.

Except thankfully it didn't happen. And now those same media and politicians are dealing with the real PR disaster of having to manage perceptions among a public that will be even more cynical about the next dire thing that comes along.
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** Must-clicks **

Howard Kurtz in The Daily Beast | A Hurricane of Hype
Tony Harden in The Telegraph | Politicians, the media and the Hurricane Irene apocalypse that never was
From the Philadelphia Inquirer online..."Jason Samenow, chief meteorologist with the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang, which is receiving kudos for its accurate and restrained reporting, said last night that some cable anchors were still reporting that Irene could strike New Jersey and New York as a major hurricane long after his team determined that it clearly was weakening."

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UPDATE: August 29, 2011 - American Red Cross response to continue for weeks... Seeking both financial and blood donations. Click here to help right now.

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Radisson shows how to reinvent a poor brand

2011-08-27T10:47:10-06:00

People who travel aren't surprised to know that the Radisson U.S. hotel chain ranks at the bottom in consumer satisfaction. So the Chicago Tribune’s travel writer asked if I thought Radisson can save its dilapidated brand with its new “upper upscale” Blu hotel line, the first of which will take up 18 floors in the city’s stunning Aqua skyscraper.

Absolutely.

In fact, Radisson’s Blu represents the only real way a company can hope to reinvent a brand whose reputation for dull, poor experience has become institutionalized in the nation’s hyper-competitive marketplace.

"When rebuilding a brand, you have to go all out," I told the Tribune. "If you do it incrementally, you're asking for a lot of patience. You have to overwhelm them. You have to create a level of cognitive dissonance that hits the reset button. That goes a long way toward creating a new life for an old brand."

Can’t wait to see the place.
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(Photo courtesy the Chicago Tribune)

Flacking for despots and a call for real-world PR advocacy

2011-08-16T14:44:37-06:00

For many years I've criticized Public Relations Society of America for its flowery pretentiousness, and for routinely pontificating on unethical practices without naming names.

So I have to give credit to PRSA CEO Rosanna Fiske for calling out several PR agencies that are working for nations like Libya, Syria and Bahrain.

These firms are "counseling enemies of global democracy; ruthless despots who cut down their own people to save whatever feeble remnants of their legacies may remain," Fiske writes for The Hill's Congress Blog. "When asked to explain their questionable work, most offer a ham-handed response to the effect of: 'We're just the messengers.' This explanation is an insult to all who value transparent and ethical communications from governments and private businesses alike…

"Yes, everyone has the right to have his voice and perspective heard in the global marketplace of ideas. But for U.S. PR firms to represent dictatorships that do not afford that same freedom to their own people is disingenuous to America's liberties and its reputation as a marketplace for dissenting ideas."

Well said. And about time.

It's possible that PRSA's admonishment is too late. For years the organization has emphasized that the role of public relations is effective communications born of good intentions, the so-called "free flow of accurate and truthful information." It has distanced itself from the reality that PR is the business of influence, as if this purpose is inherently unethical. This created today's all-too-prevailing notion that good PR is the end result of itself.

And over time this mushy center made what should be the elevating voice of the profession irrelevant to the companies and agencies that trade in lying, manipulating the truth or working for dictators.

But maybe not. Maybe Fiske's diatribe is the beginning of a new movement. Maybe the scandals that have scarred the nation's confidence in its institutions will embolden PRSA to a new era of advocacy, where the spotlight is unflinching and the battles are epic.

For all Americans, that would be an influence worth having out there.
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Why most PR measurement doesn't count

2011-08-12T14:33:35-06:00

Speaking to PRNews recently, PRIME Research CEO Mark Weiner was adamant in dispelling the “myth” about evaluation being more expensive than it’s worth.

“The truth is that proper research can be executed for a small fraction of the PR budget – one percent or lower in some cases,” he argued. “While a level of investment is required, the better question might be what is the cost of not improving performance when competitors are improving theirs?”

Mark is right in that PR research doesn’t have to be expensive. The problem is that it’s not easy.

Measuring the influence of perception on behavior is complicated stuff, often beyond the skill set of standard-issue publicists and communication people. That’s one reason why so many agencies and departments treat PR as the end result of itself. They’ll count the number of samples handed out at a product launch, or calculate the “value” of press clippings in terms of how much it would cost to run the same amount of advertising.

It’s also why the PR industry has become like advertising, handing out scores of glitzy awards for creativity and implementation, regardless of whether the desired needles were actually moved.

But these kind of validations are like dancing about architecture. They mean whatever you can convince people they mean. And so we have the irony of needing good PR to sell the value of good PR.

To Mark’s point, the better approach could include bringing in experts like him. There are many good researchers, pollsters and strategists out there. Let them measure your PR by the value it creates, not by its process – however unique or productive.

Then you’ll know that you’re not just making noise. You’re making a difference.
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Newsweek: Spinning outrage to stay alive

2011-08-10T11:37:33-06:00

Struggling Newsweek Magazine has created quite a controversy with its “Queen of Rage” headline and wild-eyed cover photo of Michele Bachman.

That’s the point.

Not politics. It's not news that Newsweek and sister blog The Daily Beast are run by liberals. But this in itself makes no profit. What keeps editor-in-chief Tina Brown up at night is not defeating Michele Bachman or destroying conservative women. Her problem is how to sell enough advertising next week to keep her ever-thinning rice-paper rag from finally sinking into oblivion.

In the Internet era, Newsweek’s strategy is to earn commercial relevance not by covering news, but by becoming news. And they’ll do that with magazine covers that create outrage. Or what passes for outrage in a gamed society where other people and institutions manufacture outrage so they can get in the news, too.

That’s why the magazine ran a fake photo of a 50-year-old Botoxed Princess Diana walking alongside of with Kate Middleton. Next week Newsweek might have a cover shot of John McCain French-kissing a snake. Or Michael Jackson’s ghost hovering over a little kid’s bed. President Obama falling off a cliff. Maybe a pregnant Boy Scout.

Whatever gets people talking about what people are talking about. That’s how you leverage today’s churning grist mill of Internet-driven news, infotainment, social media, talk radio and opinion TV.

Even when everyone knows their chain is being deliberately yanked.
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Also read: Helpful publicity hint: Create outrage to your outrage over some outrage. Repeat as necessary.

Transparent Generation creates booming market for online personality profiles

2011-07-22T13:48:16-06:00

In 2006 – before the Facebook and Twitter tide – I wrote this:

“Call them The Transparent Generation.

They're the first true children of the hyperconnected information age, and they were using the Internet before they could write cursive. Now they're starting to graduate college, ready to launch their careers as responsible, tax-paying young adults.

And many of them are waking up to a nagging concern about their online trail of screw-the-establishment web sites, embarrassing party photos, gushy poetry blogs and message board diatribes - all created way before they ever thought they might be Googled by a potential boss.”

Five years later, those same potential bosses have institutionalized the Internet hiring experience by creating a market for companies like Social Intelligence, a business service that “scrapes the Internet for everything prospective employees may have said or done online in the past seven years.”

Read: Transparent Generation realizes downside to growing up online.

Q: How many creative directors does it take to change a light bulb?

2011-07-19T14:12:11-06:00

A: Does it have to be a light bulb?

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Next big idea: Change “calories” to “kalories” to make the food sound more ominous

2011-07-19T14:08:31-06:00

Despite hopes and assumptions of public health activists, research shows that including calorie counts on restaurant menus doesn’t deter Americans from ordering cheeseburgers, pizza and other high-calorie comforts.

If it were you it'd be a whole different crisis

2011-06-14T21:17:57-06:00

In the weirdness that comes from sticking to approved talking points, Colorado congresswoman Diana DeGette said about fellow Democrat Rep. Anthony Weiner, "I agree with President Obama – if it were me, I'd resign."

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Weinergate: When apologizing is absolutely the wrong PR advice

2011-06-10T11:11:52-06:00

Whenever a scandal like Weinergate hits the news, experts chime in with the platitude about apologizing being the most immediate strategy.

New York publicist Jessica Kleinman echoed the position:

"The best way to deal with a crisis and do damage control is to face it head on and come clean. Not a lot of people like a cheater — but no one likes a bold-faced liar. We all make mistakes but admitting to them is the first step in repairing a tarnished reputation."

But this one-size-fits-all approach is dangerously simplistic in responding to complex, escalating situations.

Telling a high-profile person to rush out and apologize is suggesting they make themselves legally vulnerable in ways that often go far beyond the scale or impact of their personal screw-up. Their apology could generate false allegations from people wanting to exploit the spotlight. It could cost shareholders and employees who had nothing to do with it. It will drag innocent people – too often families and children -- into the public meat-grinder.

Also remember that the celebrity, politician or CEO under fire has already lied by pretending to be someone who wouldn't do what he or she did. That makes any apology terribly sensitive. A guy who screws around and then says how he's sorry for hurting his family earns mass cynicism, not forgiveness.

Then there's the biggest elephant in the room: the other pictures, girlfriends, video clips, texts and babies that we don't know about - yet. There's a good chance that the person ready to apologize for what he got caught doing isn't telling you everything. Shocking but true: Liars lie to their PR people.

Lying in the face of facts stems from all sorts of personality disorders. Many powerful scandal-mongers think they hold such public esteem that their denial will be the end of the matter. They're serious when they ask, "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"

Sometimes they're just delusional, or trying to convince themselves they can make it go away. Some are insulated from reality by swarms of expensive yes men and tookus smootchers.

But many high-profile types lie because they're trapped, not because they're unaware of the consequences. The problem is that they find themselves in a corner that wasn't covered in media training – caught doing something horrible, something that requires a yes or no to a direct question. They lie because they don't know how to handle what's under the tip of the iceberg, the stuff that's about to make their situation much worse.

You can't frame a public apology without understanding why the people involved first denied what they did, or why they might be lying about revealing everything there is to know. You have to know everything there is to know. Everything.

Only then will influential people caught up in self-created scandal be in the right frame of mind to listen to advice from their true friends, lawyers and PR handlers.

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Tech media: Same as it ever was

2011-06-08T16:35:51-06:00

For all that the Internet has changed the world, the big dogs in technology media are still very much the same as they were years before that Y2K bug thing.

A new poll from PRSourceCode finds that PR people of today mostly aim their tech-related flackery at the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Forbes, BusinessWeek, Information Week, Network World, CIO, Wired, EE Times, CNET, IDG, PC Magazine and Info World.

Extra credit if you can remember which one said that DOS would never die.
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Five ways to improve your news media interview

2011-06-06T13:09:51-06:00

Most CEOs and top executives are very good communicators. They're articulate, focused and command the room with their presence.

But get them in front of a reporter and many of these same high-achievers try too hard to be a perfectly packaged persona. When they see video of themselves being interviewed, they're shocked at how artificial they look and sound.

I often reiterate five media interview methods to help them project their real selves:

Speak, don't pronounce. | With reporters, keep the tone and tenor to that of having a conversation. Many executives have a wonderfully gracious, polished style, but they'll overdo it in media settings and come across like they're running for vice president. Experienced reporters are hyper-sensitive to business people who speechify or drip with techniques they obviously got from media training. It can have quite a negative influence on the interview.

Don't try to make every swing a home run. | The best way to sound like you were water-boarded by your PR department is to force every talking point into every answer. Instead, integrate what you want to get across in context to the conversation, just like you do in real life. And make sure you're PR people help you prioritize you're the three key messages for each interview out of the gazillion that might be in your communications strategy.

Slow down. | Everyone tends to speed on in interviews and presentations, either because their nervous or animated in their intensity. Whatever the reason, try to remember to take a literal breath between passages. It will feel weird at first but it will help.

Tell stories. | Many executives have a natural gift for telling stories, but in an interview they'll often make passing reference to an anecdote or not finish a story. Part of this is a matter of just going too fast, and part is not having all those great stories embedded into your personal style of narrative. This is something you and your PR people should work on constantly.

Keep to a problem-solution orientation. | Try to spell out specific problems or issues that your organization is solving. Reporters who have not worked outside the newsroom often don't grasp the full dynamic of a corporation or organization. Talking in terms of problems and solutions will help them understand the value you create for the people who matter most to your bottom line.
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Does your brand need a big-city PR agency?

2011-05-12T14:08:06-06:00

If you’re a mid-sized national company based in a second-tier market, that might be your reaction to hearing how Denver’s Frontier Airlines has hired New York-based MWW Group, one of the world’s largest independent PR agencies.

It’s a fair question.

Frontier, the Colorado Tourism Office and other Denver-based brands “go national” figuring they’ll get more value exploiting the critical mass in media relationships and other resources of a large agency versus being the biggest client for a local PR firm. Brands in smaller cities all over the country make the same decision all the time.

Sometimes this is the best approach. But not always. There’s a reason that the best marketing PR agencies in smaller cities like Denver do so well. They’re typically less expensive, especially in the junior to mid-level account executive range where the work is more commodity communications than capitalizing on personal connections. Many of their senior people have big-company, big-city experience. They’re smart. They get results. And they’re close enough to be called on your carpet if they don’t.

One thing is for sure. When local companies like Frontier Airlines hire a big-city PR agency, it puts the professional services community and all of their major clients on notice.

That’s good for everyone’s business.

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What it means that so many journalists think PR people are idiots.

2011-04-01T16:15:18-06:00

I heard from an editor who tells me that in a single day:

… A PR rep pitched a local college’s new MBA program but said it was against school policy to reveal how many students were enrolled.

… A PR agency sent a press release announcing that its client won a huge new contract without naming the customer. They instead argued that there were still many other "interesting angles to cover."

“What the hell is wrong with these people?” he asked.

It’s a question I’ve heard more in the last five years than in my whole career. Journalists tell me about all sorts of amazing PR stories:

… Press releases that arrive as Word documents, then shows the client’s notes and revisions when the reporter clicks “track changes.”

… A drug company sued by shareholders because its PR agency issued a "media advisory" promising historic news at a press conference, which turns out to be nothing. The PR agency argues that the release it sent over BusinessWire wasn't meant to be seen by the general public.

… A reporter tells an account executive that the press releases they keep sending him are useless. “We don’t cover product announcements,” he says. “That’s obvious by just reading our magazine, isn’t it?” The PR pro pauses and says, “No. But can you send me one?”

… Media outlets get a newsworthy press release regarding a large local company, then get calls 30 minutes later from the PR agency demanding they not cover the story because they "didn't mean to send it out."

People get paid for this.

There are many smart and talented PR people. But in the last decade there has evolved a subculture of publicists who seem to revel in their obliviousness about how news media works. This is the crowd that journalists, editors and producers can’t stand to deal with. Most good PR people can't stand them either.

It's the oblivious flacks who keep alive the silly, sophmoric notion that PR and media are opponents in some great battle for truth.

No, we just got some clueless people in our ranks.

It’s not hard to understand how most of them got here. These are people who grew up not reading newspapers, who didn't watch CNN, who didn’t open Time or Newsweek unless they had to for a school paper. They learned about current events from snippets on their Yahoo home page, by watching Comedy Central and reality TV, by picking up references to news injected in the celebrity gossip banter of their favorite drive-time radio stations. They know everything about pop culture but can’t name the last five presidents or explain the difference between a CEO and a COO.

Maybe they majored in public relations or communications, but they’ve never worked in a newsroom, much less published anything. And now they’re called media relations specialists.

The good news is that companies and clients that employ the facile flacks are getting the idea. There are now more ex-journalists in public relations – albeit with mixed results, as some reporters make terrible spokespeople. In other areas, you’re seeing more investment in training and in hiring real pros – young and old – who have a lifelong relationship with news content. And many bad media relations people have moved on to social media, where they happily don’t have to write long paragraphs or use the telephone.

Still, stupid press flackery gets plenty of attention on the Internet, from insiders like Bad Pitch Blog, Denver PR Blog and PR Daily, to mainstream media like The Huffington Post to the New York Times.

Sure. Some of it is terribly overstated.

But anything that chases PR people who don’t read newspapers to full-time gigs as Twitter Tweeters is good for business.

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Also: PR and the business of enthusiastic incompetence.

Denver loses another national media office

2011-04-01T11:30:27-06:00

Just got word that the New York Times is shutting down its Denver bureau this week. National correspondent and former bureau chief Kirk Johnson tells us that “working from home is the new order of the day.”
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Unless you burn it into a cows behind, your logo is not your brand

2011-03-23T15:23:24-06:00

Writing for ColoradoBiz magazine, marketing advisor Lida Citroen notes the difference between a company’s graphic image and its marketable reputation:

“Those of us in corporate brand development hear it all the time: clients looking to reinvent themselves, reissue their value and create more market knowledge attack the challenge by trying on a new logo.

“Your brand is a promise of an experience you send to a specific target audience [and] an understanding of their needs (functional and emotional) in order to build relevance and loyalty. We create marketing identity and build tools like logos, websites, social media sites, collateral materials, etc. to communicate those values and build engagement with target audiences based on their needs.

“Marketing pieces reinforce your value statements and your brand promise. They are extensions and expressions of your brand, not your brand itself.”
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US Olympic Committee looking for communications people

2011-03-22T09:23:32-06:00

A collegue passed on two job openings at the US Olympic Committee:

Senior Manager, Communications (Reputation Management)

Senior Manager, Communications (Marketing Communications)

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The upside to journalism's downfall

2011-03-18T08:56:30-06:00

In an essay for Atlantic magazine, James Fallows laments the rise of new media but sees hope for a revived notion of true reporting.

Guest post by Megan Lane

While most media pundits lament the passing of journalism’s golden years, writer James Fallows also sees a silver lining.

In the aptly titled Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive, Unreliable) New Media, Fallows reiterates fears about today’s profit-driven, infotainment brand of news reporting. “Media will fail to cover too much of what really matters,” he writes, “as they are drawn toward the sparkle of entertainment and away from the depressing realities of the statehouse.”

A potentially frightening result of this sparkling facileness is the deterioration of the nation’s very intellectual capacity as mass media “optimized for attracting quick hits turns into a continual-distraction machine for society as a whole.”

Today's media consumers are uniquely empowered to decide the type of product they watch, read or listen to. We are no longer a national audience being told what’s important by a handful of trusted gatekeepers, says broadcast icon Ted Koppel. We are instead, he says, a “a million or more clusters of consumers, harvesting information from like-minded providers.” Has this tectonic shift in how Americans consume news diminished journalism’s institutional goal of ensuring a knowledgeable public? To some extent, yes. You can’t deny that in a consumer-driven news world, the Kardashians will win mass audience over the war in Iraq any day of the week.

Even so, Fallows believes that there may be hope for us. Yes, new media may mean a more unreliable, decentralized, “fluffier” style of journalism. But the Internet age may also help to bring a richer supply of legitimately important news to the masses in ways that no previous delivery vehicle could hope to accomplish. For all the sloppy and poorly produced content, media consumers today have access to an infinitely wider array of experienced news sources and public policy discussions that didn’t – and still don’t – exist in most newspapers and television coverage.

Could the new media age actually improve the field of journalism? It may be happening as we watch. Fallows concludes by considering the historic events in Egypt:

“ A major event in world history was covered more quickly, with more nuance, involving a greater range of voices and critical perspectives, than would have been conceivable even a few years ago. Within hours of the first protests in Egypt, American and world audiences read dispatches from professional correspondents—on Web sites, rather than waiting until the next day, as they had to during the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

Add to this faster, broader coverage the impact of amateur YouTube videos, real-time Twitter feeds, blog posts and Facebook conversations – all happening literally in time with breaking headlines. The result is a depth of news coverage and analysis that while difficult to classify in the context of traditional journalism is engaging the public like never before.

If Fallows is right, the death of journalism as we know it may actually be a rebirth into a new era of redefined, better journalism. It may be a maturing of the information age where truth still rises above the clutter of the information glut to be exposed, analyzed and spread further than ever before possible. Here’s hoping that he’s right.

(Megan Lane is a Senior Associate at GBSM, Inc. and was previously an editor at the Aspen Daily News. Scatterbox editor Steven Silvers contributed to this post.)

The most goofily pretentious definition of PR. Guess who.

2011-03-16T11:23:04-06:00

One of the joys of being in PR is trying to explain what you do to bosses, in-laws and parole officers. For some execuflacks, however, it’s either too simple or too guilty to just say that we use legitimate influence strategies to advance business, social and political interests. No. We have to make it sound like we’re all on a hilltop singing We’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (and Read Our Press Release).

Blogger Heidi Cohen compiled an interesting collection of 31 different PR definitions. Many are full of good intentions, some are academic, a few are smarmy.

But none of them match the inflated, grandiose pomposity of the Public Relations Society of America, which defines what we do for a living this way:

“Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”

This is of course news to most of my clients, companies that employ PR staffs and most PR people themselves. Come to think of it, I have never heard a CEO yell, “Get the communications director in here so we can adapt mutually with our publics, dammit!”

Many years ago we issued an April Fool’s announcement saying that we were no longer going to call ourselves a PR agency. From now on, we were going to be a Hype Optimization Solutions Enabler.

If we’re trying to be the center of the universe, I still like HOSE better than Mutual Adaptation Helper.
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Send your favorite definition of PR to scatterbox@stevensilvers.com

Pew report: Change, technology and facileness define the news business

2011-03-15T21:34:14-06:00

Here are highlights from the State of the News Media report by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism:

Sure, we still need journalism. | News organizations still produce most of the content that people read, see and hear.

We just don’t need so many newspaper reporters. | Newspaper newsrooms are about a third smaller than they were a decade ago. For the first time, more people are getting their news from the web than from newspapers.

Still back to you, Walter. | Television remains the primary source of news among grown-ups.

The new mainstream media was born with a dot com. | Newspaper shrinkage has been offset by new hires at online news organizations like Yahoo, AOL and the iPad “The Daily.”

The machine is the message. | With consumers deciding where and how they want to get news, the real power has shifted to the geeks who develop the devices and software.

Which is why I will be adding a thermometer doo-hickey to my blog. | Almost half of all Americans use a mobile device to get local news, mostly about the weather.

A mile wide and an inch deep. | Why does the journalism world miss so many important stories? Fewer reporters with not enough training and too much to do, obsession with speed, lower pay and hoards of people creating compelling content for free. That’s not even including the singing kitten videos.
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Three truths of the new gotchaism

2011-03-09T10:00:02-07:00

Two weeks after a so-called “advocacy journalist” pretended to be a conservative billionaire in a call with Wisconsin's lefty hatin’ governor, a couple of activists pretended to represent a fake Islamist group in a meeting with righty hatin’ NPR executives.

What’s going on out there? This:

Reality media has evolved into the new gotchaism. | This was inevitable. Reality content is far more exciting – and commercially valuable -- when the cleaning lady turns out to be the CEO, the volunteer turns out to be a multimillionaire, and the liberal donor turns out to be a conservative front group with a secret camera.

Mainstream media is more than happy to let activists and propagandists create news. | Remember those quaint times when news outlets considered not running stories that originated from unsavory sources like the National Enquirer? Cute. Those days aren’t just over, they’ve been replaced with a new ethic of anything goes. Today a surreptitious video posted on YouTube can carry just as much weight as the trench coat-donning reporter on the scene. In today’s hyper-competitive news media market, the questionable means to good content has become just another aspect of covering a controversy.

Disingenuousness is a PR problem waiting to happen. The goal of gotchaism is to catch corporate execs, politicians, thought-leaders and institutions being true to the agendas their opponents accuse them of hiding. You’re going to see many more hidden-identity stunts like the NPR sting, and more investigations like the one that uncovered prominent professors who had been paid by Gaddafi's PR machine to write positive things about Libya’s democratic potential.

The new era of opposition outing isn’t targeting just your actions. It’s challenging the validity of your public persona.

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Low-key branding in a high-profile industry

2011-03-08T13:27:03-07:00

Some corporate brands get built without big-production epics. Reacting to the heated rhetoric on all sides of the nation’s energy debate, Ensign U.S. Drilling wanted to add its voice to the case for clean natural gas but without veering from its historically understated corporate personality.

The result was the company’s first-ever TV ad, produced in-house and featuring unscripted employees who give the sincere impression that they see the forest for the trees. (Disclosure: Ensign is a GBSM client.)

Watch at Ensign US Drilling

This week’s best email scam: Are you not dead yet?

2011-03-07T09:53:38-07:00

"Please, if you are really alive, you are advice to quickly get back to this bank to let us know if you are alive."

Another well-written collectors item from the ubiquitous Miss Joy Carr.
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Barclays Bank Plc.
Scotland Branch,
21 Cowgate Kirkintilloche,
Glasglow, Scotland G66 1HW
Website: www.barclaysbank.co.uk
E-mail: (barclaysbnkscotland@administrativos.com )

ATTENTION: ARE YOU AWARE OF THIS?

Are you dead or alive? The reason for this question is that we received an email from one Mr. Henry Kyle. He has claimed to be a very good friend of yours, Mr. Henry Kyle has brought to the notice of this Bank that you are, dead and that you have given him a Letter Of Authorization signed by your personal attorney before your death to enable him receive your fund, which is pending in our Bank as your next of kin.

Mr. Kyle in his email referred the Management of this Bank to the below site:
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/12/25/benin.crash/index.html

He stated that your unfortunate death on the 25 of December 2003 was on the CNN news. According to him, after the unfortunate plane crash, which claimed your live and that of your entire family, you were among those that was rushed to an emergency hospital, whereby you died few days later and gave him the Authorization Letter before your death to enable him claim your fund, which has been pending for long in this bank. Mr. Kyle added that why he has taken this long to claim the fund is because he has been on a business trip since after your death.
Although, we have responded to Mr. Henry Kyle, but in our response we told him that we have to confirm if you are really dead to avoid any kind of money laundry from him, and also told him that your fund valued at the total sum of (15,000,000.00GBP) only; has been approved in your favor, and that we will start the transfer of the fund to him into the account he has provided us with, but only after we confirm if you are really dead or not. In addition, we have asked him to call back after 5 Bank working days to enable us carry out our investigations thoroughly by confirm if you are really dead.

Washington Mutual Bank
2075 S. Victoria Ave
Ventura, CA 93003
800 788-7000
Acct. name: Mr. Henry Kyle.
Acct Number: 1951204345
Swift Code & Routing Number: withheld for security reasons.

Please, if you are really alive, you are advice to quickly get back to this bank on: (barclaysbnkscotland@administrativos.com) to let us know if you are alive.

Thanks for your co-operation.

Miss Joy Carr
Head, Transfer Department.
Barclays Bank, Scotland Branch.

Government PR contract controversy: An open letter to PRSA CEO Rosanna Fiske

2011-03-02T10:52:10-07:00

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA)chair/CEO Rosanna M. Fiske sent a letter to the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, which is investigating the General Service Administration's use of PR firms, specifically a Kansas City crisis firm hired to help with an environmental issue on a nearby federal property. Fiske's letter urges the Subcommittee to "consider the substantial public interest served by public relations and public affairs on behalf of the federal government."

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Dear President Fisk:

Like many PR people, I've done work for public entities and government offices. I understand how public contracts can get people riled up. So it makes sense for you as head of the Public Relations Society of America to argue our profession's relevance in your letter to the Senate Subcommittee of Contracting Oversight. Thanks for that.

But I have to take serious exception with the tone of your letter because you paint a picture that in the long run is far more pejorative than politicians calling us flacks and spin doctors.

Your letter emphasizes that the role of public relations is effective communications based on really good intentions. You imply that taxpayers and their watchdogs have no reason to be anything but thankful for government PR contracts, because our industry's only purpose is to provide information so that we may create mutual understanding and serve the public good by getting people to stop smoking and other nice things.

But this description is spin. Unadulterated, accentuate-the-positive-eliminate-the-negative public relations spin. And everyone knows it.

The truth is that we are in the business of influence.

Sure, we should do things ethically and with a mind toward the greater good. But that's the means, not the end. PR people get hired to achieve someone else's bottom line: sell product, win votes, improve share value, create support, make an embarrassing controversy go away.

The father of modern PR, Edward Bernays, came up with the first true description of our profession when he coined the term, "The Engineering of Consent." He didn't call it "The Informing of the Public About Pressing Social Issues."

Yet over the last two decades this notion has become the great disconnect between PRSA and the working world of PR, especially the consulting side. Out here we get clients by showing we can get results. We only hope our competitors are saying they should be hired because their singular mission is to "advance the free flow of accurate and truthful information."

Not that it's true anyway. Yes, there are many PR people who represent good causes and all things beneficial to children and other living things. But there are also as many PR people – and PRSA members – who represent questionable candidates, fatty (but mighty tasty) cheeseburgers, corporations being sued by the EPA and more than a few controversial public works projects. In almost all of these situations, good and bad, public relations people are packaging and managing information to advance the interests they work for. You're doing the same thing right now.

The point is that public relations people are not journalists. It has never done us any good to pretend we are.

The sooner our profession acknowledges the realities of what we do and why we're hired, the sooner we can deal straight-up with legitimate questions about government paying for our kind of expertise.

Regards,

Steven Silvers (APR)
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Submitting to Scatterbox

2011-02-25T14:19:44-07:00

Scatterbox at StevenSilvers.com, an executive blog about public relations and strategic influence, welcomes press releases and news announcements, post ideas, interesting links, books and other material for consideration. Please include your contact information including your organization or who you represent so we can get back to you as needed.

Send all items to scatterbox@stevensilvers.com.

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Through the looking glass: The lesson of corporate immigration investigations

2011-02-25T09:16:34-07:00

Guest post by Michele Ames

In Lewis Carroll’s classic tale, Alice faces a host of inexplicable anomalies: two-sided mirrors, time running forward and backward, the need to read jabberwocky and ambulatory chess pieces that cause no end of havoc.

In short, she went through the looking glass. And so are many companies having to deal with immigration investigations.

No doubt you’ve seen the headlines about companies including Chipotle Mexican Grill (disclosure: a long-time GBSM client) being subjected to “employment compliance inspections” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security. In contrast to Bush-era bum’s rush raids on factories and business offices, the new modus operandi is what they call a “silent audit.” This is where ICE selects a good-size target company and then – without revealing why that company was singled out -- requires it to produce thousands of documents.

ICE reviews all of the I-9 employment eligibility verification forms, then alerts the company to any workers who do or may not have proper documentation. Typically, the company has no choice but to quickly fire those employees to put itself in compliance with standards it thought it was meeting, and to establish at least minimum position to begin negotiating with ICE toward resolving the situation.

Even so, the government fines the company for having employed people whose paperwork may not have been legit. And all during this process, ICE holds at least the threat of escalating its actions to even bring the company’s leadership up on charges.

There are a million issues with this approach to enforcing America’s immigration laws, starting with the fact that the employers are being investigated by a public agency as transparent as a wall of cinder blocks.

These companies are caught in a untenable double bind. They must check for illegal workers with each hire, and do so thoroughly enough to root out falsified documents. But whatever system they use must be applied uniformly across the board, or they will be sued for discrimination by the very potential employees they are required to investigate.

Almost none of the corporations that get the silent audit treatment have broken any law. Far from it. Federal laws only require companies to make a good faith effort in trying to not hire undocumented workers. But you wouldn’t think that from what these companies pay in hard dollars and damage to their brand reputations. Meanwhile, the governmental entity behind the chaos has no obligation to disclose why they started the investigation, what they find or even when the investigation is closed.

They are at liberty, however, to announce just about anything they want in relation to the investigation at any time they choose.

These ICE actions leave a lot of companies asking themselves if they have, in fact, gone through the looking glass into a world where infractions real, perceived or with no basis at all are taken as definitive. Where the people asking questions give no answers.

There’s a name for this kind of environment. If a company finds itself navigating through a world where logic doesn’t apply and two plus two equals purple, they are no longer playing in corporate governance and public relations.

They’re playing politics.

For many companies, their otherwise excellent legal, communications and investor relations teams aren’t enough. Now they will have to spend considerable resources on high-powered government relations executives – meaning lobbyists -- and a flotilla of lawyers who specialize in this byzantine parallel universe.

The only way out is back through the looking glass. It’s a process that resolves itself on a political timetable governed by the next election cycle and the sessions of Congress, not a quest for justice governed by the rule of law. This is a playing field where the chess pieces move themselves, where both the opponent and the referees speak an strange jabberwocky.

It an expense that creates no value, no brand equity. In the end it doesn’t really fix anything. But for companies that find themselves arbitrarily targeted, it is an unfortunately reality that has to be reconciled as quickly as possible.

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Former award-winning political journalist Michele Ames is a senior associate at GBSM, Inc. Scatterbox author Steven Silvers contributed to this post.

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Another reason you’re always on the record. And always on alert.

2011-02-23T12:33:50-07:00

People who believe reporters should be licensed and regulated have a new outrage: So-called "polemical journalist" Ian Murphy's call to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker in which he pretended to be billionaire right-wing activist David Koch.

We'll be hearing about this for months, maybe years. Was it a prank call or guerilla journalism? Does the end – important insight into an elected leader's intentions and personality – justify the means? Is there even such a thing as ethics in journalism when the public interest is at stake? Is transparency the only thing that matters? Is media accountable like politicians should be?

These are important questions. And they don't mean squat.

Because in the real world, Murphy's explosive success at simultaneously creating headlines and celebrity status means his way of doing business has value. It is going to be copied many times.

If you are a public figure or chief executive – especially one in the middle of a controversy – pay attention. Protect your access. Let unrecognized mobile calls go to voice mail. Train your people to screen inquiries and verify credentials. If someone calls you out of the blue claiming to be a 60 Minutes producer or a high-profile billionaire, think to check caller ID. Not sure? Ask to call him or her back. If they are who they say they are, they'll understand.

You don't succeed by avoiding legitimate interest in what makes you newsworthy. But don't think you're dealing with mass media on a level playing field.

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Good move for American Humane Association

2011-02-21T09:01:00-07:00

You’re going to be hearing a lot about American Humane Association in the months and years ahead.

One big reason: The 113-year-old champion for the protection of children and animals has rightly moved its national headquarters from the quiet of Denver’s southern outskirts to the buzz of Washington D.C’s central business district.

Most Americans don’t realize they see American Humane’s work every day, from its influence behind federal child abuse prevention policy to being the Hollywood-sanctioned organization that adds “No Animals Were Harmed" to a movie's end credits. They pull pets from disaster areas and rescue starving horses from hoarders. They also have a huge head start in the emerging humane labeling marketplace with American Humane Certified, by far the largest and most industry supported farm animal welfare training and auditing program.

With leadership from new CEO and former Pew Charitable Trust executive Robin Ganzert, the now DC-based American Humane Association is on a path to recognition that will no doubt make it one of the nation’s prominent mainstream philanthropic institutions.

Stay tuned and give them your support. They're good people.

(Disclosure: American Humane Association has been a client of my firm, GBSM Inc.)

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Twidiots have become corporate risk factors

2011-02-20T22:51:24-07:00

I still know business executives who think Twitter is something they do at the Golden Pony Men’s Club.

Thankfully they’re a shrinking minority. A new Burston-Marstellar study indicates that more Fortune 100 companies use Twitter than any other social media platform. Today 77 percent of companies have accounts, up from 65 percent last year.

As more companies and organizations adopt Twitter, so do their employees – some who are designated to Tweet on behalf of the brand and many more who do so on their own.

And that raises the risk of Twidiots.

Every few days mainstream and viral media pick up on a “Twitter gaffe” by somebody whose 140 characters created a public relations problem for their organization. Just like the over-30 Dominos employees who uploaded video of themselves stuffing cheese in their noses, what makes Twidiots dangerous is that so many of them are people who should know better.

Case in point: International journalist Nir Rosen resigned from his position as fellow at New York University after his Twitter tirade about CBS reporter Lara Logan, who had been sexually assaulted while covering events in Egypt. As Logan was still being treated, Rosen posted remarks like these:

"Jesus Christ, at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and glorified we should at least remember her role as a major war monger" and "Look, she was probably groped like thousands of other women."

Just weeks before, fashion icon Kenneth Cole had to make groveling apologies after one of his people tried to make a marketing promotion out of Egypt’s revolution:

Perhaps there will come a day when every mobile device and computer carries a required warning label:

ATTENTION: Use of Twitter may cause embarrassment as well as increased risk of liability for you and XYZ Corporation. Do not operate while inebriated, angry, depressed or after a large meal. Have a Twittering problem? Call 1-800-NoTweet.

Until then, you probably should have every board member, employee and even vendor sign a social media policy. Still think it unnecessary? Consider this: Deloitte's 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey found that a third of all employees never even consider what their boss might think before posting something online.

Your guidelines can be thin or thick. You can remind people that confidentiality agreements extend online. You can authorize only designated ambassadors to post for the company or prohibit uploading pics and videos taken on a work site. You can require training or offer midnight interventions. You can discourage the use of mass political uprisings to sell pants.

Whatever the approach, your social media policy must make at least one point crystal clear: That people can be held accountable for what they do on the Internet.

Here’s a database of social media policies to start from.

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Scatterbox | Managing the unmanageable: Employees talking about your company on the Internet

The final over-under on this year's Super Bowl ads

2011-02-09T22:43:45-07:00

Final thoughts on the 2011 Super Bowl TV ads:

Most everyone’s favorite | My unscientific poll was validated by Nielsen ratings: Volkswagen's Darth Vader kid (above) was by far the most popular spot of the Super Bowl. It was simple and genuinely funny. However…

Marketing yin and yang | Nielsen ratings also show an astonishing gap between the ads that were most liked and those with the best brand recall. (Meaning people couldn’t remember what kind of car the kid started with his mental powers.)

But they’ll probably still win awards | I was taken by how many spots were complex, confusing or plain incoherent. So was AdAge guru Rance Crain, who complained that too many Internet-era marketers approach advertising as the end result of itself. “As one agency exec told me,” he wrote, “Execution is becoming an excuse for ideas… That sorry state of affairs was certainly on display at the Super Bowl ad fest.”

Cheesier than a Packers fanatic | The promo for Denver’s local Fox 31 newscast could have been an SNL parody: An overweight guy in a referee outfit peers into a replay booth next to the anchor desk, then turns to the camera and says “Upon further review, Channel 13 is the best local news.” Anchorcouple pump fists in celebration. Jaw-dropping lame. I won’t even mention the second ad where the rotund ref throws a flag for anchorman interrupting anchorwoman.

Madison Ave. of the West | Nice to see Boulder-based Crispin Porter + Bogusky behind the critics No. 1 favorite, the Best Buy ad that ends with a confused Ozzy Osborn asking “What the f**k’s a Bieber?”

But was it worth it? | Chief marketing officer Barry Judge thinks Best Buy’s first-ever Super Bowl ad was worth the risk for all the afterlife it could generate from news, social media and influential middle-age PR bloggers from Denver. “Super Bowl ads are first and foremost about entertainment value,” Judge wrote on his blog weeks before, adding “I know it’s a big bet. For us to run it our key business leaders, including our CEO, had to be all-in.”

Bottom line | It cost about $3 million for a 30-second spot in this year’s Super Bowl, and Fox had all 68 spots sold by October. Not too bad a return: The Packers-Steelers game was watched by 111 million people in the U.S., more than any TV show ever. That’s only $18.50 per domestic eyeball.

Smokin' message strategy

2011-01-24T09:03:45-07:00

A press release from Greenway Medical Marijuana Doctors in San Francisco takes the high road in educating consumers about its value-added product line:

"Many patients are unaware that cannabis enhances their lives as well as controls the symptoms of their illnesses. Taken properly, cannabis helps them focus, plus increases their productivity, creativity, and awareness. Patients often find that their social interactions are more meaningful with cannabis: it makes people pleasant and adds to one's emotional intelligence.”
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What Wal-Mart's healthy foods initiative says about corporate issues management

2011-01-21T15:09:26-07:00

I’m quoted in a Chicago Tribune story about Wal-Mart’s healthy foods initiative, which includes lowering prices on fresh foods, offering healthier private-label products and pushing suppliers to do likewise. Wal-Mart launched its “Nutrition Charter” at a press conference with first lady Michelle Obama, who leads the fed's anti-obesity campaign.

As with everything Wal-Mart, there’s plenty of pro and con. Let me suggest three things that it all proves about managing corporate controversies:

Politics are facile. Profits are foundational. | Candidate Obama attacked Wal-Mart for destroying the middle class and other crimes. It got activists jazzed and made good headlines. But changing U.S. consumer habits won’t happen without leveraging the buying power and influence of the retailer where more Americans get their food than anywhere else. Wal-Mart isn’t exclusive to this issue, but without it the road to healthy is less a superhighway and more a crumbly uphill sidewalk.

These are events that separate dreamers from doers. | The same thing happened with sustainability and will happen with humane labeling. Advocates split into two camps: those who acknowledge the pragmatism of working with Wal-Mart and those who dismiss any collaboration with the megacorporate enemy. A typically myopic sentiment: “What Mrs. Obama with her name recognition ought to be doing,” writes Salt Lake anchorman Robert Maxwell, “is working solely through non-profits, schools and volunteer agencies to further her noble cause. And I don’t think Wal-Mart despite all the corporate charity it offers, needs the freebie endorsement.”

At the same time, a blogger from Mother Nature Network questions her notions of good guys and bad guys. “It’s time for me to think about the level of evilness that I have attributed to the company,” writes Robin Shreeves. “And, while I don’t have any plans to step foot in a Wal-Mart anytime soon, perhaps I can be more understanding of the people who do — at least to grocery shop.”

Doing good in one social issue doesn’t get you off the hook in another. | The arrogant or just clueless corporation overestimates the extent to which one social responsibility initiative will lift it above the turmoil of other issues. That’s not the case. State-of-the-art factories still get hit with OSHA suits. Progressive retailers still get investigated by ICE. Happens all the time.

In a fine analysis of Wal-Mart’s healthy food initiative, The Atlantic’s Corb Kummer writes that despite the partnership with Michele Obama, “no one at the White House can be unaware of ongoing controversy over Wal-Mart’s labor practices.”

Bottom line: One hand does know what the other is doing, but that doesn’t mean government won’t use both to squeeze what they want out of your company.
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