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interface level is going to completely eliminate a potential misunderstanding, misinterpretation of the policies, an outdated policy, or individual having a bad day.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.

This is a follow up to the last podcast Five Ways Social Media Will Generate More Leads I read David Murray’s piece from Ragan Communications Protecting Your Sources Leads to Incomplete, Empty Stories

In this piece Murray makes the point that sometimes as a journalist he was concerned his sources would not like the piece when published. He refers to some writers, whether they be journalists or paid writers on internal corporate publications, who attempt to sanitize the piece, not including candid statements or personality traits, that may well be of interest to readers, but perhaps would be viewed as embarrassing for the source.

In a section Murray writes “People, I have found somewhat to my surprise, want less to be praised and more to simply be seen—for who they think they are—and heard, for what they have to say.” And this is my contention for the concept of the embedded corporate journalist. Corporations will gain more among their employees and their intended audiences by living a bit more actively and willing to talk about the elements of decisions as they are unfolding instead of waiting for everything to be perfect and scripted.

The embedded corporate journalist must align what is news worthy, what contributes to the topic, with the expertise and perspective his company or client. This is not about “Spin Doctoring” which is the art of twisting the topic to the point of confusion. This is about “Topic Engineering” which is contributing to the discussion in such a meaningful way that greater clarity is achieved.

More on the embedded corporate journalist

Is your company a candidate for having a embedded corporate journalist? Why or why not?

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.

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!