Flack's Revenge

The Sarah Palin "Money Shot"

Call me crazy, but I have carefully reviewed and compared Sarah Palin's and Miss South Carolina's interview performances and I am starting to suspect that these two might in fact be one and the same person.  Have you ever seen them in a room together at the same time?

This judgment is drawn not just from superficial characteristics - their poise and good looks, the fact that both are beauty queens.  I have closely examined unique characteristics in vocal patterns and syntax.

Watch this hilarious video on Prometheus Unbound.  Also, see below, and let me know if you disagree:

Question for Miss South Carolina: Recent polls have shown that a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a map. Why do you think this is?

Her answer (thanks, Career Life Times )

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh, people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our ed- education, like such as in South Africa and, uh, the- the Iraq everywhere, like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or- or- should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future. 

Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin why the physical proximity of Alaska to Russia qualifies  as foreign affairs experience.

Her answer (thanks, NY Times):

That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land — boundary that we have with — Canada...

Ms. Couric went on to ask the governor if she had ever been involved in negotiations with her Russian neighbors.

“We have trade missions back and forth,” Ms. Palin said. “We — we do — it’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where — where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border.”

Can you tell the difference?

Seriously, I do have some sympathy for Ms. Palin.   Gibson and Couric both seemed like they were suffering from severe constipation when interviewing Palin.  Their stiff demeanors belied the glee they both must surely have felt as they successfully tripped her up.  You can almost envision them huddling with their producers in advance, wondering how they can get that Sarah Palin money shot.

But then, she was packaged and sold to us as a poised and articulate candidate who is ready for the national stage and possibly even the presidency.

McCain's campaign needs to get her prepped and do some media training, and do it fast.

PR Tips for Entrepreneurs

I struck up a nice dialog with Anne Clelland, a dynamo who is the force behind Handshake Media and a number of innovative blogging efforts, namely Handshake 2.0 (I love that name), a blog that showcases tech entrepreneurs, and helps them make connections, and Inside VT KnowledgeWorks, a blog for the VA-based business incubator of the same name.  Please see this link for more info about her various forums.

Over the course of our discussions Anne posed a question to me: what are the top three PR tips I can share that she can bring back to the entrepreneurs she works with for H20 and VTK?

I gave it some thought and came up with these:

1) Before You do Anything Else, Spend Time Honing the Message

With the proliferation of media of all types, it has become increasingly harder to be heard above the noise.  That is why you need to make sure your story is interesting and resonates.

Most focus their efforts on describing the service or product they are marketing - the names, features, benefits etc. You need to also fit this within a story - a narrative that takes into account the marketplace you fit into, and explains how and where you fit, and how you will make a difference.  In  short, you need to describe your position in the market and vision for it.

For further reference, please see my Words that Work in Tech PR series.  Also, in my post Building Better Memes , I referenced the excellent book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, which tells how to craft stories that resonate.

2) Take your Story to the People

Back in the day (just five years ago), coverage was important for the sake of coverage and the vaunted press clipping reigned supreme.  These days it is more about making connections, and knowing where and how to be seen.  Many social media and social networking channels let you bypass the traditional gatekeepers - major media and market research analysts - and take your message directly to the audiences of interest.

See my post on Fusion PR Forum: The Advent of User-generated PR.

Social media such as blogs enable anyone to have their own soapbox.  Social networks make it possible to directly connect with potential customers and influencers.

There are many who can help you understand and utilize these channels.  Anne focuses on this in her work with H20 and VTK.  The agency I work for, Fusion PR, offers a range of social media PR services.  One thing that can't be outsourced is your own genuine voice - your thoughts, ideas and expertise.

So it is important for you, the entrepreneur to be vocal online, and get out there and be seen and heard.

3) Work the Traditional PR Channels

As important as social media is theses days, traditional media still counts, so don't forget major media, radio, TV and the trade media that cover your market in your PR efforts.

Some in the media and PR profession have said that the press release is dead.  Don't believe it for a minute.  Press releases are still a great way to get the word out, assuming you follow my instructions in 1, above, and don't spam people with gratuitous releases that don't say much.

New companies and new products are intrinsically newsworthy, and issuing a press release over one of the traditional wire services is a great way to get attention, boost SEO, etc. 

I would be remiss if I did not mention that there is much more to PR than "sending and praying" - i.e., just issuing the press release over the wires and hoping people will take note.  You need to also directly get in touch with those who are most likely to cover the news, and not leave it to chance that they will see it on the wires.  Ideally, you want to do this before the news goes out, give these people a heads up that the news is coming, and offer to brief them in advance.   News has a very short shelf life these days; after it crosses the wire people will quickly lose interest and move on to the next hot story.

Anne posed some additional questions in the above-referenced link:

What’s happening here, however one defines “here,” is high-tech on fire.  It’s fueled by innovations and inventions at Virginia Tech and Radford University, the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, the business accelerator VT KnowledgeWorks, initiatives from economic development organizations such as the New River Valley Economic Development Alliance, and other factors.

Here are our tricky local questions:

• If California has Silicon Valley and New York has Silicon Alley, what does Virginia have?
• More specifically, how does the New River Valley, Southwest Virginia, or the NewVa Corridor name and brand its high-tech economy?
• Does it need to?

I am not sure if anyone who reads this blog has suggestions; I am sure Anne would appreciate some good ideas.

I did mention to her that she should get in touch with Near-Time (disclosure, a client of mine at Fusion PR). 

It won't answer all her questions.  But I can say that this hosted Web 2.0 platform has been used successfully around the US, and internationally, to aid regional economic development and  promote workforce innovation.  The platform provides an interactive Web 2.0 hub that can link government agencies, education and economic development organizations, and entrepreneurs, providing users with ways to make contacts and access resources that are key to building businesses, training workers and reinforcing local economies.

SNAFU Silences Flack's Revenge for Two Weeks

I'm back, after a couple of anxious weeks in which I lost my domain, fought to get it back, briefly considered abandoning the whole thing, and then finally did get it back as evidenced by this post.

I won't bore you with too many of the details.  In brief, my Domain name registrar GoDaddy had some incorrect information in my profile (some but not all of which was my fault) resulting in the fact that I never got several email notifications that the registration for FlacksRevenge.com was expiring.

I called them in a panic when I realized that the site was down, thinking that there was some small glitch that could easily be corrected by providing updated credit card information.  No such luck, apparently the domain name was sold off and I no longer had any rights to it.

They claim they sent me numerous emails, which I suppose they might have although I did not get these.  You would think they would have some way to escalate and perhaps pick up the phone before pulling the rug out from under an obviously active site.   That is apparently not part of their procedures, which I learned by chatting with a very helpful person named Todd in the President's office of GoDaddy.   So it is a mystery to me why they collect phone numbers in their account profiles in the first place.

As the realization that I was royally hosed settled in, I went through the stages of grief that Kübler-Ross described (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), not unlike what one goes through when someone that is close dies.  OK, so it is not TechCrunch, but I have spent a lot of time and effort building this blog.

"It's all so fragile!" remarked Anne Giles Clelland, blogger at Handshake 2.0, when I told her about my situation.  Indeed it is.

Then, a Zen sense of detachment set in.  Certainly, I thought, there are many other blog concepts I could launch.  And: I will now have lots more free time!  But, no, I did not want to abandon ship, not on terms dictated by someone else.

After threatening GoDaddy with a lawsuit, which did not seem to make much of an impression, I took Todd up on his advice and emailed the new domain name owner. 

A number of contentious emails back and forth later, the new owner agreed to sell it back to me for a number that was much higher than he or I initially paid - in the hundreds of dollars - because he is "such a nice guy."

Over the course of my various conversations it became clear to me that the new owner  - someone in Israel - acquired the name in an auction after my rights to it expired.  He claims he had plans for the domain.  At the end of all this I still don't know whether there is some evil partnership between registrars like GoDaddy and people who hold accidentally expired domains for ransom - or if everyone was operating with the best of intentions.

After a Mexican standoff (I refused to just send funds via PayPal and take it on good faith that he would revert the site), we agreed to use Escrow.com, which has an option specifically for domain name transfers and worked very well for the purpose.

Anyway, I am back, sorry for the hiccup

The Death of the PR Pitch

 In my frenzied killing spree - my PR Death Watch series, blog posts that predict the demise of sacred cows of PR - I have overlooked one of the most obvious anachronisms: the PR pitch.

Pity the poor pitch.  It just wants to be heard and loved.  It is needy, and seeks that attention of anyone who will listen.  It smacks of desperation.  It is the Spam of our profession.

Now, stay with me on this one.  I have not gone nuts.  Like the press release (which some people said would go away after Tom Foremski's now infamous post), the pitch will not become extinct anytime soon.  PR people will seek the attention and coverage of intermediaries, and their approaches will be called  pitching.

But surely the PR pitch is not what it once was.  Back in the day ("the day" being anything before about three or four years ago) pitches, if not always exactly welcomed, often provided fodder for traditional media to build stories.

To an extent this still happens, but pitches are more often becoming fodder of a different sort.

In this era, the pitch has become a great big target, a victim of those that need to fill white space, the blogger's muse and all-too-convenient piñata.

Further, social media has changed the way people discover information.  Today, it is more about engagement and becoming part of a  conversation (this is actually a good thing, IMHO).

So when I say the pitch is in its death throes, I mean pitches as they have traditionally been used by PR: the lazy form letter that fuels the mass blast.  I blogged about this in my post: Try Fugu, the Tasty New Pitch Spam Delicacy.

So what will replace the PR pitch?  How will it change and how will we change?

As promised in my post Reimagining PR, I will start offering positive counterbalances to Death Watch posts.  So stay tuned.