Flack's Revenge

If Data Center Tech Were Marketed like the Republican Candidates

I heard about the latest out of a seemingly endless number of Republican debates, and thought back in
amusement about a comment a friend posted on his Facebook page.  He said, sarcastically I hope, that he was looking forward to more and hoped they continued even after the election.

The campaign season so far also made me wonder what it would be like if data center tech was marketed like the Republican candidates.  Here are a few possibilities, below - do any others come to mind?

• The leading vendors would host industry round tables in every market timed to key events in those markets
• The round tables would be staged like Jerry Springer talk shows, where questions are designed to start fights and rile the audience
• The participants would all argue about whose solution holds truest to industry ideals like high performance, bandwidth, improved energy and space efficiency and low latency
• They would pile on the market leader and attack it for not achieving those ideals in a socially acceptable way
• Their leaders would fight over who was most like industry icons
• Their leaders would call each other out about hype, bluster and grandiosity

Most of all they would talk, talk talk.

 

Louis CK Conquers Media, Heeds Mom's Advice: Just Tell Them Everything

Louis CK is a comic hero for every man, an unkempt alternative to the more mainstream comedians (think Seinfeld or Dane Cook).  He is irreverent, dark and just plain damn funny.

I have greatly enjoyed Louie's work, inlcuding his  FX and HBO series.  That is why I was pleased to see reports of Louie's recent successful effort to market content directly to his fans.

I first learned about this last week in the GigaOm piece: What Louis CK Knows that Most Media Companies Don't  The article says:

Until recently, comedian Louis CK was known mostly for a hilarious clip about how “everything is amazing but no one is happy,” which lampooned our inability to recognize our own good fortune and led to a TV show. Now, he has become the new poster boy for the idea of selling content directly to fans, after the success of a video download he offered on his website without any digital-rights protection. And that success contains lessons for traditional media companies who continue to lock down their content and otherwise fail to take advantage of the social web.

What Louie did, essentially, was bring his content directly to the public via his website at an affordable price ($5) without imposing restrictions or digital rights protection - avoiding the tangle of overhead, middlemen fees etc. that he otherwise would have had to pay. In other words, Louie made it cheap and easy - and is profiting in the process. He has also been getting a ton of great press.

The NY Times' David Carr covered this yesterday in his Media Equation column:

The show could be viewed as the consumer wished, with no rights protection or expensive subscription. A buy-it-and-watch-it proposition, no cable company involved...While I was talking with him on the phone Thursday night, he checked his Web site and about 175,000 people had bought his special through PayPal. He expected 200,000 total downloads by the weekend, which meant he would have grossed $1 million. After covering costs of about $250,000 for the live production and the Web site, that’s a $750,000 profit. And he owns the rights, and the long tail of buyers, in perpetuity.

As a PR person, I had to chuckle about his approach, and media relations advice that Louie's mom gave him (from NY Times).

The transparency of the enterprise, including its cost in relation to how many people bought in, was the subject of media coverage all last week.... “It feels weird having numbers out there, because that’s my personal income,” he said. “But I talked to my mom, who is a pretty judicious, careful person, and she said, ‘Tell them everything. Just let it all get out there.’ So that’s what I have been doing...” 

I don't know if I would always agree with that approach, but the advice seems to be working for Louie.

Are Penn State and other Schools like Teflon when it Comes to Crises?

In the Jewish religion, there is a saying we keep in mind to help us stay strong during tough times: "this too  shall pass."

A story in the New York Times sports section yesterday - Some Lessons in Damage Control - reminded me of this. The main message of that article is that there often is not much long term impact of crises on universities.

Times writer Tamar Lewin took a look at possible long term effects of the Penn State sexual abuse scandal on the school within the context of how others fared, using Texas A & M, Virginia Tech, Duke and Indiana Universities as examples (which involved a bonfire collapse, shooting rampage, false rape accusations, and firing of Coach Bob Knight, respectively).

Lewin writes:

While the turmoil at Penn State has been the academic equivalent of a Category 5 storm, it will probably not have much long-term impact on the university, experts say.... Certainly, it will take years, perhaps a decade, to resolve the fallout from the sexual abuse scandal that has engulfed the football program.... But citing other universities’ experiences with crises, many higher education officials and crisis-management specialists predict that the effects will not last a year.

The statements in the above paragraph sound contradictory, don't they?  If it is true that the effects will not last a year despite the "years, perhaps a decade to resolve the fallout" - what could be the reason for this?

Perhaps the answers can be found in the following quotes from the article regarding crises at Virgina Tech and Penn State:

“It might sound trite, but prospective students and their families saw on TV a united student body and incredibly supportive alumni population working together with strong university leadership,” said Larry Hincker, associate vice president for university relations at Virginia Tech. “It was painful and stressful, but the institution kept moving in the right directions, dealt openly with problems and shared our experiences with others..."

Hartle [of] the American Council on Education, said he thought it was a matter of time before Penn State again deserved its nickname, Happy Valley.

“With some deft outreach and some hard work, even the angry students on the streets this week are likely to become, like their predecessors, happy and loyal supporters,” he said. “Colleges and universities are much bigger than any one individual or scandal. Their crises become part of their history.

Abercrombie & Fitch Lob Grenade at Jersey Shore Cast

Ah, the delicate and complicated dance between journalism and PR. We tempt them with our pitches. We run campaigns, events and sometimes stunts to get their attention and coverage. Many journalists say they are beyond our influence and ignore our pitches and campaigns. Yet every once in awhile, the temptation is just too great.

This was the case yesterday, when many covered a light story, one that provided welcome relief to late summer doldrums and "hold your head" headlines about the economy.

I grinned as I read several articles about an Abercrombie & Fitches press release that explained that the company would pay the Jersey Shore show cast not to wear their clothes. The company had executed a brilliant campaign, and the media were all over itt.  For example, it got covered in not one but two Wall Street jorunal articles, and a NY Tmes piece.

And it wasn't just the media that were having fun with it. The NY Times story - Abercrombie wants off  'Jersey Shore' (Wink-Wink) - mentioned that the A & F CEO interrupted a quarterly earnings call with Wall Street analysts, incredulous that they wanterd to discuss other things:

“Is no one going to ask about the Situation?” Mr. Jeffries, the chief executive, asked after a series of questions about Abercrombie’s finances and strategy. Finally, an analyst did, and Mr. Jeffries explained the background. 

Of course, the media need to let everyone know that they are in on the joke, as the "wink wink" headline in the Times indicated. And they all had to seemingly justify their coverage by interjecting real world concerns. The article in the Journal's Money & Investing section, of all places, raised the real issue of brands getting tarnished through association with the wrong crowds:

It appears Abercrombie is merely trying to stir up publicity. After all, the company last year sold a Tshirt printed with the words "The Fitchuation," an obvious reference to the star of the reality show nicknamed "The Situation."

But brand image isn't all fun and games. Flashback 10 years to England, where Burberry clothing and accessories became the uniform of certain hard-partying young Brits. Sales in England were very weak by 2005, when Burberry acknowledged that the brash new customers had alienated some of its higher-end traditional shoppers. Tommy Hilfiger had a similarly unpleasant experience in the U.S. in the 1990s, when it became a hip-hop staple that no longer clicked with preppies.

Standard & Poor Steals Headlines with "Ratings Hatchet"

They must really think there is no such thing as bad PR.

No sooner did we get past the debt ceiling limit fight in Washington - a battle that left us all exhausted, but relieved that it was finally over - than we woke up to news that the Standard & Poor had downgraded U.S. debt, which sent markets reeling and left us all shocked. Wasn't this the very thing we were trying to avoid?

The Journal wrote a nice story yesterday that documented the moments leading up to the downgrade. It has the elements of a political thriller and PR case study, including details about a press release that Standard & Poor shared in advance with the Obama administration, which included a $2 trillion miscalculation, and how both sides wasted no time in launching campaigns, taking to the airwaves to tell their sides and win credibility points.

Paul Krugman wrote in the SundayTimes about S & P's incredible chutzpah:

If there’s a single word that best describes the rating agency’s decision to downgrade America, it’s chutzpah... America’s large budget deficit is, after all, primarily the result of the economic slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis. And S.& P., along with its sister rating agencies, played a major role in causing that crisis, by giving AAA ratings to mortgage-backed assets that have since turned into toxic waste.

And the NY Post reported that S & P took a "ratings hatchet" to Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway yesterday, "less than 48 hours after the Oracle of Omaha publicly blasted [it]."

These guys at S & P know how to steal a headline. Do they have any other icons to slay? Just what are they smoking over there?

Indian Point PR Campaign may pit Cuomo vs. Giuliani

For a PR person who loves to follow politics and lives in Northern Westchester County, NY, it just doesn't get any better.

The NY Times reported today that Indian Point nuclear plant owner Entergy is in talks with former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani about a PR campaign to counter negative public perception, setting up a potential battle with the Governor:

The Entergy Corporation, the operator of the two reactors at Indian Point, which generate as much as 30 percent of New York City’s power, has been in talks with Mr. Giuliani about headlining a major advertising campaign aimed at allaying public concerns about the facility’s safety. The campaign would effectively pit Mr. Giuliani, an erstwhile Republican presidential candidate, against the governor, a Democrat.

Indian Point has been a sore point for people who live in the area. I understand the argument that it would be difficult to replace this source of power, and fears may be overblown. Yet the recent earthquake in Japan, which brought a nuclear plant close to meltdown, seems to have driven a fresh round of questions and scrutiny here in NY. And anyone from the area who is familiar with the emergency planning and evacuation procedures knows that these are jokes.

Andrew Cuomo, who by most accounts got off to a good start as NY Governor and seems to have the wind at his back, has voiced his opposition to Indian Point.

Giualini and Cuomo are two NY-based super-sized egos that fascinate and sometimes confound many people, myself included. I have greatly admired both men at various times, and have also been in irritated by them (although if I were to pick one for this campaign and in general it would have to be Cuomo).

It will be interesting to watch this battle unfold, as I am sure the media will be all over this.

(I thank my friend and ace photographer Steve Lesnick for pointing this article out).

NY Times Public Editor Puts PR Through its Paces

I enjoy Arthur Brisbane's Public Editor column in the NY Times, a feature that does a post mortem each week on the paper's editorial decisions and reporting.

It is a forum that lets him and the readers vent a bit and also get reaction from the editorial, management and reporting teams. The column really shows how reporting sausage gets made, as it is not afraid to ask the tough questions; and the light it shines is not always a warm and bathing glow. The Public Editor shows the newspaper's commitment to excellence and transparency, and is one of the reasons I love the paper.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before Brisbane got around to PR, and I saw that he had recently when Tom Bebbington alerted me via a tweet. The very title "PR Professionals, Bane or Boon?" got my hackles up (OK, can someone please explain hackles are). My readers know I am sensitive about how PR is portrayed in the media, and the very thought that an entire profession can be a bane!

Despite the title, Brisbane seemed to show an open mind in his musings about PR's proper role in reporting in this piece, and graciously asked for feedback from the PR field about this (more on this below).

The latest column refers to an earlier article that prompted lots of reaction from the PR crowd,  One can see why the earlier story caused a stir.  In that one Brisbane revealed an anti-PR bias and defended what I feel is an overly aggressive NY Times policy regarding the PR field. 

He took consumer tech reviewer David Pogue to task for getting paid to appear at a PR event.  Although Pogue is a freelancer, and might not be bound by the same rules as Times reporters (standards governing freelancers vs. employees were covered in an earlier column, and Brisbane talks about it a bit here), Pogue has since agreed to discontinue the practice. 

I share my thoughts on the eipsode below; the text in italics are exceprts from the original story:

..the speech flagrantly violates the prohibition against giving advice at paid P.R. conferences.

Maybe it is just me, but I fail to see how speaking fees from a general PR entity (in this case, Ragan, a publisher) can corrupt the process of reporting on the specific people, companies or issues covered in news stories. 

Moreover, I think it is a little silly to treat the PR profession as a separate class.  While It makes all the sense in the world to have rules that avoid conflicts of interest - my feeling is that separate rules are not nescessary for an entire field - why not throw lobbyists in there too, politicians, sports figures, and celebrities? We should be pretty well covered by rules that say, for example, that reporters should not accept gifts, meals, etc.

...Times readers deserve to be assured that journalists don’t get too cozy with the P.R. professionals who strive to influence coverage. A virtual army of publicists, media specialists and others stands ready every day to infiltrate the news with stories that help their employers.

The above statement makes PR sound rather dark and evil, doesn't it? 

For The Times, keeping the appropriate distance is important and the paper was wise to curb whatever P.R.advising the peripatetic Pogue has been doing.

Anyone who reads Pogue knows that he giveth as well as taketh away in his reviews, they can be pretty scathing; regardless of all the teeth gnashing over conflicts, he is fair (see my earlier post about this, and previous conflict of interest charges against Pogue made by the Public Editor).

Please see below for the questions Brisbane asks of the PR field in the more recent story (in italics) and my answers:

What are the benefits that publicists and P.R. professionals can provide to The Times? Are there any problems?

PR plays an important role in the production of news by acting as information providers, and by helping to connect reporters with information and sources.  As Brisbane wrote:  Pogue explains that, as a reviewer of new gadgets, there is no comprehensive database he can rely on to learn about new stuff. Hence he relies on companies and their hired pitchmen to tell him about new products.

The real PR pros are industry specialists who go beyond connecting sources and flogging news and products; we alert the media to trends, and suggest interesting story angles and opportunities.

This is at no cost to the journalist or publication; of course we  do have a vested interest.  If the journalist or publication is not interested, they can simply ignore us, so what really is the harm?

In terms of problems, I would think most PR people would agree that we have no interest in spamming or otherwise keeping after reporters if they tell you that they are not interested, but there are unfortunately those in our field who do not get the message; I would say that they are not the majority, although these instances do sometimes get lots of attention.

How easy or difficult is The Times to work with compared to other news organizations?

So this is where I am supposed to let off a little steam and say how I really feel, right? Here in this public forum? Or via an email to Brisbane which he might make public? Seriously (and honestly), in my experience the Times is not easier or harder to work with than most other top tier publications. It generally gets down to the relationship with the individual reporter or editor; like any other business relationship; building trust is important.  Over time, you hopefully build those mutually rewarding relationships.  Some choose not to work with PR, and that is fine too.

Walking to Raise Money, and PR

An op ed piece in the New York Times raised an interesting question about the connection between walking and raising money for charitable causes.  Why not take the same effort that is exerted at these events, and apply it to something really useful, doing even more good in the process?  Regarding the Boston Walk for Hunger,Ted Gup writes,

What I saw that morning in Boston was a resource diverted from its true purpose. Imagine those 210,000 man-hours (42,000 times a five-hour walk) put into direct service to benefit the poor. Think of the houses that might be built, roofs repaired, gardens planted and harvested, public spaces improved, and meals delivered to shut-ins. (And add in the efforts of the 2,000 volunteers that day and the contributions of 50,000 donors.) Now multiply that by the millions of man-hours that are represented by such events in cities across the nation, from Los Angeles to Louisville, Ky., from Austin, Tex., to Grand Rapids, Mich.

In reading further, though, it becomes clear that mass walking serves a purpose to support charitable causes that is not wasted effort; rather it is collective motive force applied to something that sounds a lot like PR.  Gup writes:

The easy explanation, of course, is that there would be no giving — or not nearly so much — without the walks. Fund-raisers recognize that the nobility of giving is often stimulated by activities that conjoin the selfless with self-interest.

Those who oversee such fund-raising spectacles argue that there is more to these events than meets the eyes — mine included. These walks and runs are incubators for future volunteers and donors. They constitute a public proclamation that others matter. They make the invisible visible. More to the point, it is easier to get relatives, friends and colleagues to open their pocketbooks than it is to win over the largess of strangers.

That is the genius of such events.

 

Weiner and Sheen: Possibly the Best Pitchmen for PR

For the very definition of unscripted, unplugged and a little if not a lot nutty public figures, you have first Charlie Sheen and then Anthony Weiner, possibly the best advertisements for PR in recent memory.

They both took us on pretty wild rides. Weiner's episode culminated in a surreal press conference yesterday that was almost carnival sideshow (see the New York Times article Confession and Apology...) in which conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart (who first broke the story) led off. Exactly how or why this came to be, I am not sure.

What is clear is that both celebrities pretty much winged it when it came to mixing it up with the media and going on public record (as the Times article said, Weiner did not use PR - As a politician, he was his own publicist, megaphone, strategist and multiplatformed tech man wrapped into a tightly wrapped Type A package - that now seems pretty obvious).

There will be some that say that these public figures deserved what they had coming, and no amount of spinning or image crafting would have helped. To them, I say: "are you serious?!!!" I guess if you enjoy watching public immolation and train wrecks that might be true (the stories also refute the myth that there is no such thing as bad PR).

How could PR have helped? Well by helping these guys not look like total idiots for starters. A little thought and planning when it comes to media relations, and some moves from the crisis management play book would no doubt have helped. Sure, they both probably would have crashed and burned anyway, but in a less horrific way, with easier paths to redemption.

Time Says Reputation is Dead on Wall Street (and Dying across Corporate America)

Most people agree that it is important for a company to have a good reputation. There is a value that can be ascribed to reputation that is very real - both intangible, i.e., related to the perceptions of a company, that is its brand - and a hard, dollars and cents, value too. I wrote about this back in 2007, and cited research that showed that a company's reputation can have a measurable impact on its stock price.

Yet an article in the New York Times DealBook yesterday argued that corporate reputations are becoming increasingly irrelevant. It said that Wall Street is leading a trend in which size and tech rule the day, and people and corporate reputations - well, they just don't matter as much anymore.

I share a few key excerpts below. I do not completely agree, of course (and would be surprised if anyone in the field of PR does) but it is interesting reading, and writer Steven Davidoff makes some excellent points - what do you think?

Reputation is dead on Wall Street...Why does reputation no longer matter?

The reason is unfortunate and partly attributable to why we got into the financial crisis. People simply don’t matter as much on Wall Street as they used to. Instead size and technology carry the day.

Today’s Wall Street is not the Wall Street of 1907

Until the 1980s... Wall Street was made up of traditional partnerships. These were small groups of investment bankers [who] put their individual reputations on the line, because there were so few of them.

But this began to change in the 1980s. Trading markets became much more sophisticated, and trading and brokerage became the investment banks’ primary business. This is a technology game. The better the technology, the better the trading and brokerage operation. Individuals became less important.

The growth of more complex capital markets and a global economy also created much larger financial institutions... These banks could use their assets and position to compete in the market for finance and trading.

These trends have become omnipresent in corporate America generally as it too has exponentially grown. And when these companies failed or otherwise committed a wrongdoing, their size allowed their reputation to be ignored. After all, it wasn’t the executive’s fault that the bad event happened. It was just the economy or other external factors.