Time 13:09

Big Packge PR Problem

Delta Airlines got itself into trouble with a baggage policy for active military personnel that for nearly a decade had seemed to be working well. Active military traveling to and from war zones using Delta Airlines is not a new thing. A YouTube video of military personnel returning from Afghanistan tells their story of being charged $2800 for extra bags. The issue here is about large packages, some heavy with weapons which may also be an issue on connecting flights with weight limitations.

One can make the case that the government should pick up the cost of those bags and not the individuals, but that is another issue for another time.

I accept these types of situations as unavoidable. Large companies need policies in place and no amount of training at the customer interface level is going to completely eliminate a potential misunderstanding, misinterpretation of the policies, an outdated policy, or individual having a bad day. What is avoidable is the exacerbation of the problem by a corporate reaction that is viewed as insensitive.

Delta Airlines Reaction

“ Thank you to everyone who has participated in the recent conversations on baggage allowances for active duty U.S. military personnel. We appreciate all of your thoughts and insight, and want to share an update on the soldiers involved as well as changes to our official policies.

First and foremost, we want you to know we’re continuing to work with the soldiers individually to make this situation right for each of them. We regret that this experience caused these soldiers to feel anything but welcome on their return home. We honor their service and are grateful for the sacrifices of our military service members and their families.”

These two paragraphs from the Delta blog in reaction to the YouTube video just sounds like corporate speak. This is the inherent conflict between the legal silo of corporate America and the social environment of consumer conversation.

First let’s change the language. Try something like “We messed up. Or, “The policy that was in place for nearly 10 years no longer works. We are sorry to the service personnel and are reimbursing them in full with round trip airfare for their family to anywhere in the world. We also have changed the baggage policy for military personnel on military orders and put out an immediate notification to all of our baggage employees at check in counters.”

Little Package PR Problem

Which brings us to Congressman Weiner. This issue is just loaded with public relations horror however there is hope for Mr. Weiner. Ironically the wise PR counsel in this situation is the same that can apply to Delta.

1. 1) come clean quickly
2. 2) acknowledge those violated and, to the extent possible, address in word and/or deed making them whole,
3. 3) extinguish the issue from public conversation by either removing yourself from the situation or highlighting subsequent changes.

In the case of Congressman Weiner he needs to leave office and get out of the spotlight. There is nothing good that can result from Weiner’s presence on any camera at this point in time. The additional issue that Weiner has going against him is permanently fixed image associated with this story. The best PR advice for Weiner is to exit stage right, get cleaned up and remerge as a “changed man.” Remember Governor Eliot Spitzer who resigned two days after the New York Times broke the story that he had patronized the services of a prostitute for years even when he was Attorney General of New York. Today Spitzer is an anchor on In the Arena a political talk show on CNN – America is a great country no?

The public relations moral of these two stories? There is no issue too big or too small that a little honesty and humility can’t solve.

I’m a fan of Hootsuite, I enjoy the paid service and admire Hootsuite folks like Dave Olson, with whom I’ve interacted. Dave, you’re great! That’s why I was a bit taken aback by the email that was almost, but not quite an apology and explanation. (The Hootsuite Making it Right post was also an email to paid users.) Before reading on, if you are into PR and writing you should read the HootSuite blog Making It Right to which this post is based.

I appreciate the enormity of the outage experienced by Amazon’s Web Services hosting which caused Hootsuite to be down for “approximately 15 hours”. HootSuite’s email which originated as a blog post, buries the lead which is “We are Making it Right” and eliminates an apology, what no we’re sorry, really? That’s what would have been my lead.

Hootsuite is a social media company, you know the whole “speaking with a human voice” stuff and drop the corporate speak and have a relationship with the customer. If that’s the case, the lead graph would have been along the lines of the following:

We apologize for April 21 being such a bad day for our customers. It was a bad day for us as well. We realize that being down 15 hours and loosing data is unacceptable regardless of the cause. We are offering our Pro and Enterprise customers $50 worth of coupons for our social analytics reports. One of the reasons for this form of apology and offer is even though the terms of service agreement provides a refund for a 24 hour outage, we simply didn’t foresee the Amazon Web Services EC2, upon which Hootsuite relies, being down for 15 hours.

From this humble lead, then by all means proceed to explain how “stellar performance with minimal outages” Hootsuite has, or how Hootsuite serves over 3 million social networks sending over a million updates per day with almost zero downtime.

Instead here is my brainwave emotional meter thinking out loud transcript as I’m reading this Hootsuite email — yawn yawn, lawyer inserted phrase, whatever, oh, 15 hours is “significantly” less than the 24 hours in the contract so I should be damn grateful to get this $50 coupon, so long as I use it in the next three weeks, Wow, is it possible they didn’t say sorry? Wait let me reread this, it says “we know how important up-time is for you and truly appreciate the kind words from our users who missed using HootSuite.” hmmm no sorry there, but in the midst of a 15 hour outage you still managed to get a testimonial in your own “having a bad day” blog post.

I suspect that “acknowledging the inconvenience” is as close as one can get in corporate speak to what I would have preferred. That would have been a more owly like “really sorry that me getting sucked into the Amazon cloud wind sheer caused a bad day for both of us.”

Sorry to be so harsh on the post gents, but I still dig the owl. Now, perhaps because this was the words of CEO Ryan Holmes, such candor is inappropriate from a PR and legal perspective. Afterall, Mr. Holmes signs contracts and is held accountable, a cute little owl isn’t. And this may reflect the nature of how corporate culture and institutions are less aligned with the culture of social media than I would like to believe.

Back in 2005 it really hit me that public relations was impacted by social media. Between a client (Technomic Asia) getting called directly from a National Public Radio reporter after the reporter listened to his podcast, and another client’s feature piece on the front page of the Wall Street Journal getting but an ounce of subsequent attention, I realized the world of communications was changing.

So I did a little keyword number crunching and dug up this chart from Google Insights for Search. The Red trend line for good ol’ PR is not exactly stellar performance. If the PR trend line were a company’s stock performance heads would roll. Now I completely understand that these search terms are relative and in some cases public relations has more absolute searches, relative to social media, however public relations keyword searches were on a long slide to parity if not lower than the term social media.

I suspect social media consultants and PR firm executives will battle royal over which is which, and who was a leader and who was a follower. The inconvenient truth for corporate communicators, marketers, and public relations professionals is the two must coexist. In my digital dog walk audio piece for Tuesday, August 4 I reminisce about the public relations & social media tipping point, and reflect that it is not an us vs them world.
Here’s what i have found to be helpful for client PR as these two functions have converged:

Four Ways to Capture Reporter’s Attention

1. Identify key people inside a company that can relate to a social audience
2. Find ways for the client to tap the social web either by their own actions or mentions by others on the social web
3. Tell the client’s story on social channels
4. Create a multimedia newsroom
5. Reference articles and blog posts in your client’s digital footprint

I was worried that all this social media transparency would bring down helpful PR tactics in media relations. Among those tactics, speaking on deep background so as not to be quoted or even described in some way by general title. Imagine my fear after 10 years as a political PR adviser what this would do to adding value in several types of situations such as damage control, personality profiles, and adding texture to the details of making a tough decision. Not to mention the occasional attempts to poison the well, take down an opponent on character assault or the ever popular distraction tactic.

Hey i’m not knocking the tactic, it is however, used for good and evil. So you may have an open blogging policy, but only a select few can officially be quoted by the media. That’s a tricky one. Again just observing how organizations are grappling with an open information landscape.

I found it interesting in reading a piece in the New York Times on Conan O’brien’s strategy for his websie that employees were not comfortable going on record about a squatter using ConanOBrien.com. Instead, Conan is using www.TeamCoco.com to highlight his Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour. Below is how the New York Times article referenced the issue from an April 6 article titled Web Luddite No More: O’Brien Hits Internet, by Brian Stelter

“Because ConanOBrien.com is owned by an online squatter, Mr. O’Brien’s representatives decided to adopt Team Coco, one of his fans’ chosen names, as the host’s own. They even licensed a fan’s artwork for the tour poster. TeamCoco.com is a single Web page now, but as the tour gets under way, the site is to expand.

“We didn’t start the fire; we just add a log now and then,” said an employee of Mr. O’Brien’s, who, like three others interviewed for this article, requested anonymity because he did not have permission to speak publicly about Web strategy.”

This is a classic case where companies, organizations big and small are moving fast, involved in potential legal issues, are trying to keep everything in check, so there may be strict rules on who speaks to the media. Some might bristle at the phrase “no have permission…” but taking a step back you can see where having roles in a organization will help it stay focused. I also believe it gives some leeway to both reporter and the individual being interviewed to have a constructive conversation without feeling scripted. Others contend deep background can lead to a pretty leaky organization which has it’s own set of problems. I will say, before anyone jumps my case, that sometimes an organization where people have access to media, but are not comfortable being quoted may indicate a very risk averse and stifling place to work.

Shades of speaking on background paint the reality of a situation and I believe play into the desire for candor that social media, and society crave.

Where do you fall on this one, can everyone speak to the media? What if everyone can blog, can they speak to the media?

In 2010 Marketers and PR professionals must resolve their personality crisis. It is an issue that Age Ad editor Ad Age Editor Jonah Bloom highlighted at the ANA Conference this week in this 3 minute Ad Age video The issue is whether marketers are media organizations. Bloom highlights how companies including Red Bull have created so much content that they license it to others, they have also become the destination for that content like what can best be described as Red Bull TV

No they are not jibber jabbing about Red Bull this or that, they are covering the things their Fans, Friends, Followers, oh yeah, customers are into. It’s about your universe.

The same is true for public relations. Look, half of us in PR either were or wanted to be journalists. We either didn’t want to travel every two years, (that was my reason), or the pay stunk, or the hours stunk and the list goes on. But the idea of covering issues that impact people, industries, governments, are still all there.

Companies will struggle on how to deal with declining traditional media and still worse, changing viewing habits of those traditional media customers. Nielsen is in the middle of a heated debate over how they are counting viewers for local stations that don’t watch the real-time content.

I contend that 1) social community participants reward candor, 2) the web rewards fresh content that others find relevant as measured in one regard by links, with better search results and 3) we live in an on demand, go direct environment.

It is a huge mistake to interpret this as a green light to pummel the public with heretofore defined advertising dribble wrapped inside user generated content, however, it is an opportunity to reconsider what advertising and PR look like in your company. The world is dying for you to engage them, support them, be associated with something that enriches them; Help them do something that makes them better, makes their lives easier.

The interuption ad is moving from a blur you tuned out to an annoyance consumers will hate. Really, have you ever seen one of those pop-up ads that is over part of a website you want to click on? Not cool. From an advertising perspective, participate in what the audience is participating in, support its delivery not as a trojan horse where ads pop out, but as a guest coming to dinner bringing something they enjoy so much they wanted to share it with others they enjoy being with.

On the PR side consider this different perspective on PR, It would give you greater freedom to engage you audiences, more opportunities to be heard, and perhaps the greatest benefit of all, new digital information assets that are relevant for sales.

In this era of fractured journalism, there is a resurgence of the pamphleteers. Is this good or bad for democracy? In a interview with Joel Kramer, founder of MinnPost we discuss this topic Is a pamphleteer a journalist?

This issue is top of mind for me because of two stories in the news about journalists, the first about Lou Dobbs leaving CNN. Dobbs was once the stoic anchorman of Moneyline, a bastion of capitalistic news and analysis. In the last several years Dobbs became a middle age populist, an advocate journalist. His show became a cause driven program on immigration reform, opposition to both Bush and Obama administrations’ economic policy, and other issues about which Dobbs took a stand.

Jon Klein, president of CNN news said of Dobbs departure yesterday, “He pursued some of the most important and complex stories of our time… and with characteristic forthrightness has decided to carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere.”

The question – do advocacy journalists report the salient facts across an issue or is their objective to obtain policy or behavior change?

Ukraine Famine Casualty of Advocacy Journalism?

The other story about journalists is one I’m sure less of the readers of the Marketing Edge blog are familiar with compared to Dobbs. His name is Gareth Jones whom I learned about last night. USA Today did a piece on Gareth Jones who is best known for his chronicles of the forced famine in Ukraine by Russian dictator Josef Stalin in 1933 and 1934. Jones had a reputation as a solid journalist among is contemporaries in the 1920s and 30s.

He went to Ukraine against the wishes of the Soviet regime and at considerable personal risk, to see first hand the reports of famine in the country. He wrote about the export of millions of tons of grain to the west by the Communist Party, leaving Ukrainians with little food. The Soviet authorities used the funds to build its military, as estimated millions died of starvation in the Ukraine countryside.

This story caught my eye because I spent time in Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union giving presentations about political communications in the United States where there is a free press. I worked as a journalist and as a press secretary in several government positions in the 1980s. I was selected to share my experience on both sides of the news/information equation with individuals who were thrust into a new world order as Ukraine broke away from the former Soviet Union.

Many of Jones’ journalist peers dismissed his reports. As the USA Today article explains, at the time there were many journalists sympathetic to the communist system who disputed Jones’ reports and helped destroy his reputation. One Pulitzer prize winning writer of the day, Walter Duranty of the New York Times described Jones’ articles as a “scare story”. The writings of Gareth Jones are on display at Trinity College in Cambridge, England through mid-December.

The reality is that every journalist has a lens of perspective through which they choose to report. The ideal is an objective reporting of issues. Even though the writer may have an opinion, those beliefs and hypothesis should be submitted to the writer’s own critical examination of the facts as they experience them. Jones meets the criteria of a higher standard in my opinion.

There is a toxic formula brewing for journalism in the United States and everywhere there is the illusion of a free press. This cocktail has led to the entire industry missing stories with global impact.

I attended a panel discussion at the Media Relations Summit in May (strongly recommend attending other Bulldog Reporter event )with Hannah Clark, of Inc., Robert Lenzner, of Forbes, Stephanie Mehta, of Fortune, and Gregory Morcroft, of MarketWatch

This panel of editors and journalists was wonderfully candid about the state of journalism and the role PR has in contributing to the content and quality of press in this country. Their lament about the status quo of PR and journalism is the echo we all hear: too little time to read every email pitch.. stop sending pitches that have nothing to do with my areas of interest. The members of this panel felt social media had modest to little use as a resource.

So far, no new news here for me, until the candid Bob Lenzner painfully offered that journalists missed some of the biggest financial stories regarding AIG, the global economic crisis, and the bailout details. He acknowledged in retrospect that the media should have been more diligent, for example, in reading the “footnotes” of AIG’s financial statements. He wished those in PR would have highlighted these issues with greater vigor.

It struck me at that moment – 1) journalists or their researchers are the ones that should be digging into footnotes; however, budget cuts over the years have diminished that capability, and 2) the hurdles to get the attention of journalists and those journalists that are predisposed to trust a small circle of PR sources contributed to this failure of journalism to have seen this complex and long brewing financial crisis coming.

The toxic formula includes: a narrow circle of trusted business PR professionals, a dwindling number of resources to report the news, a faster news cycle, a shorter news story lifecycle, and an increasingly competitive news environment.

Can Twitter be an Antidote?

I have seen a wide range of uses of social media by journalists. Twitter is the most visible, with Business Week and CNN being among the leaders in using the platform for information gathering, sourcing, and distribution of news. The 140 Conference is coming up in New York this week. As one of the moderators on Tuesday, June 16, I’ll ask whether social media is a way to counter the side effects caused by reduced resources and increasing time demands on journalists, or is Twitter another potent ingredient that distracts from the business of reporting on serious and complex issues.

Will Twitter specifically and other forms of social media give journalists other trusted sources, will there be the time, tools, or other resources necessary for to take better advantage of the individuals who have a different voice, a new perspective, or a critical counter to the “conventional wisdom” of the select few?

Some of the journalists and news media representatives speaking on Tuesday include John Byrne. Editor of BusinessWeek.com @JohnAByrne – Rick Sanchez, Rick Sanchez (@ricksanchezcnn)  and Ryan Osborn (@todayshow) – Producer, NBC Today Show among many others.

Stay tuned this week for tweets, posts, and podcasts from the conference.

Time 16:48

Public relations is changing before your eyes, don’t believe me, visit Help a Reporter Out a website where reporters post their inquiries for experts, guests, and story angles. Then, the site’s founder Peter Shankman emails those inquiries out morning, noon, and night. No, I’m not kidding, three times a day. In fact, I use his emails as a reminder to feed my dog. She gets a cup of food at each email and is pretty happy about it (see smiling photo). Shankman is also a pet lover who, on the HARO website, supports several animal non-profits including Best Friends Animal Society and the Search Dog Foundation, helping train dogs to locate disaster victims.

Back to public relations, you may think HARO this is similar to ProfNet or other services, and you are right, but the world of social media is changing business models and Shankman is adding value at less cost.

The way PR is changing requires change on the part of companies buying PR services and delivering those services. Practicing PR for 25 years, I’ve found the equation of PR firm and client interesting. A firm is paid by a client to advise and implement services the success of which is on a third party, reporter or blogger. In that equation I’ve always considered the journalist very similar to a client in their own unique way. They, at times had a specific need for information or at other times just a general curiosity of information I might have. Finding the match of client information and journalist need is the Golden Ticket.

Here are some points for both buyer and provider of public relations services during these changing times.

For buyers of PR services

1. Think about PR before you have a problem
2. Be a resource before you want to pitch
3. Technology speeds distribution not necessarily learning about reporters
4. Don’t just measure clips, measure the real-time way people respond to company

For PR professionals

1. No substitute for learning about reporters by studying their work (this includes bloggers!)
2. Don’t rely on any one list, (purchased or otherwise), search for journalists using social media
3. Your value is not just in pitching, nor some ancient relationship, it’s the knowledge of what will interest said reporter/blogger.
4. Don’t be afraid to advise your client to expose their talents/expertise directly to reporters via social media.

Thanks to Peter Shankman for your time, Provident Partners just donated to Best Friends – see social media does work.

HR

The Marketing Edge book contest for February is The Perfection of Marketing by James Connor, to enter the contest email me at marketingedge AT provident partners dot net and in the subject line put the word perfection.

You can get on the podcast with your questions or comments by calling 206-600-6887, we’d like to hear from you. That will make us smile.

Time 27:53

The problem with many companies trying to get PR and media coverage is they think like a company. They need to think like a news organization about themselves, their industry, and the communities in which they play. In the first Marketing Edge episode for 2009 we talk with Kevin Dugan, co-author of the Bad Pitch Blog. The Bad Pitch Blog is a must read for any PR or corporate communications professional, and more importantly, clients of PR organizations. Why clients? Because you don’t want to put your organization or your firm in a situation where the pitch becomes the news. We get into how not to craft a bad pitch and approaching PR with a different perspective in part because social media has changed the landscape of public relations

Meanwhile here’s an old PR versus new PR list for 2009, Kind of like a PR fashionista list.

Old PR Thinking

New PR Thinking

That’s just a few, we can always talk more, start with a comment either below or at 206-600-6887. Provident Partners donates a food item to a St. Paul, MN food shelter for every comment we receive. Happy New Year!

Time 28:49




What’s in a word? Plenty. Not just a word, but the right word at the right time in the right places can catapult your company to the top of the Google heap. As a former journalist, I’m always thinking about the news angle, whether it’s for clients, this podcast, or the pure enjoyment of staying on top of the issue.

The beauty of this is, search engines think like news people as well. The major search engines pick up trends across the net, reward in-bound links to your page, and give recognition to first movers.

Having a focus and priorities for your marketing and SEO objectives can level the playing field against larger competitors. For example a small, and excellent company VigiLanz, develops infection control software that helps clinical pharmacies comply with a specific Federal mandate called National Patient Safety Goal 3E. With the goal of being focused on this very important aspect of their product, the objective was to produce a high Goggle ranking. The strategy of copy changes to their website and clear editorial intent in news release topics garnered a top rank in Goggle on the search of NSPG 3e software This success, however, can be short lived if there is not a dedicated effort to continue producing content that supports and I contend advances the conversation of your focused topic. (VigiLanz is a client)

Another tactic is to piggyback on the news cycles of topics in your objective. For example, say your area is financial risk management in commodities, when the government announces a new policy, the markets move a certain way, or the monthly trade report references movement in commodity, there should be blog posts, news releases, and copy changes on specific areas of your website to capitalize on the coverage of the topic. To the extent you can get a jump on the topic momentum by using social media trending tools like Radian 6 or Trackur to mention two options at either end of the sophistication spectrum.

In this podcast, I chat with Lee Odden, a nationally recognized SEO consultant. Lee and I share ideas on SEO, PR, and affiliate marketing tactics. Odden also writes the Top Rank Blog, one of the better blogs on the web. Odden will be speaking on a panel at the Affiliate Summit Jan 11-13 along with Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim.

YOU COMMENT WE GIVE FOOD

For every comment we get at 206-600-6887 or on this blog, Provident Partners will buy a food item for a local food shelter. So give someone a hot meal by giving us your opinion. Happy New Year.