Flack's Revenge

Above the FUD: Keeping PR Clean when the Tactics Get Dirty

If you travel in tech circles, you may know what FUD is - no, not the slushy gunk that gets stuck under your car grill in the winter, rather it stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Wikipedia defines FUD as "an attempt to influence public perception by disseminating negative and dubious/false information designed to undermine credibility." The label has its roots in the tech industry.

If you have been in tech PR for awhile, chances are that at one time or another a client has tried to involve you in their FUD wars, or asked you to do something that just doesn't sit right. Perhaps they wanted the PR team to plant negative or false stories (a client once asked me to sniff around a competitor's booth at a trade show to collect intelligence, and to lie about it if asked). Closely related, is when the client asks for overly aggressive media tactics, things that you know will be counterproductive.

These situations pose all kinds of questions and ethical dilemmas. After all, isn't your obligation to the client? Aren't we advocates that, just like lawyers, take the guilty and not so nice clients, and do our level best to defend them and advance their interests? On the other hand, do we want to be dragged down into the dirt - and doesn't the dirt tarnish our own reputations?

Now that the PR field has had a chance to think about and get past the Facebook PR fiasco of months ago (in which the company hired a PR firm to spread negative info about Google, see the Ragan's PR daily article on this), I thought it might be a good time to look at ways of doing a great job and doing right by clients without getting tarnished, by offering these tips on how to keep your heads high and stay above the FUD amidst vendor wars and the dirty pool that is sometimes involved.

Keep Cool and Keep Your Perspective

Always remember that clients' battles are not ours. Agencies are independent; after all, the client hired us because we are experts and because of our media relationships.  Although it is great to be counted on as a close and trusted advisor, remember, too, that we are supposed to be objective counselors who stay above the fray of internal politics and external score settling.

Let the Client Know that FUD is Just not Good Business and Not Good PR

I have found that FUD becomes more of a problem when PR is overly influenced by sales, an area that encourages aggression and hardball tactics (I was in sales before PR, so I know what I am talking about).

You may need to remind an overeager client about the following facts:

1. Reporters do not enjoy being used to as pawns to advance vendor's interests; the FUD campaign could jeopardize the collective efforts to build positive equity with the media and thus not best serve the long term goals of the PR program. 
2. As we saw with Facebook, there is a good chance that the tactics will be outed and the campaign will blow up in their faces

Turn to Management for Cover

At the first signs that the client will expect something that does not pass the "sniff test," you should not hesitate to involve agency management. They can help you make the above arguments, and also let the client know that there are industry guidelines against unethical practices.

Does all this mean there is not room for a little hardball in PR? Isn't it a little naive to think that we can remain totally above the fray of our client's marketing wars? This is not just a question about ethics. E.g. the lapse of the PR team in the above-mentioned scandal (at least, according to PR industry ethical guidelines) was to hide their client's name, which can lead one to assume that it might be "okay" to sling mud if you do share the client's name.

It is not a black or white issue, there is no single right answer; it gets back to the style of PR that you want to practice, and what you and your agency brand stand for. Agencies need to make clear to employees what is acceptable (and what is not); and you as an employee or job seeker need to make sure that this sits right with you.

(By the way, the subject of PR and ethics is a hot topic right now, and I would be remiss if I did not point people to Heather Yaxley's excellent and very detailed post this week on PR Conversations: PR is what PR Does - A Question of Ethics).

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.

DSK & Casey Anthony: The Dark Side of Story Crafting

In journalism they speak in reverent tones about the importance of THE STORY; i.e. weaving facts together into a compelling narrative.

Similarly, in PR circles we talk about storytelling as a way to make client news comprehensible and interesting. At Social Fluency, we are experimenting with new ways of doing this (see today's post there).

However there is a dark side to looking for the ideal story in a set of facts: the scenario you have lovingly crafted can be, well, just an all-too-convenient story - perhaps even a fictional one.

I was thinking about these things as I followed two courtroom dramas that have drawn us in and provided a tense and suspenseful backdrop to the start of the summer.

Yesterday morning, before hearing the surprising Not Guilty verdict later in the day, I heard some talking heads on TV discussing the merits of the prosiecution's case against Casey Anthony.  One said, more or less, that she prefers a case that is built on circumstantial evidence, because of the power of a good story; physical evidence can be questioned, witnesses can seem unreliable.

The jury apparently did not agree, and we all experienced a "WTF letdown" upon hearing news of the verdict, after hearing countless news reports that seemed to echo the prosecution's narrative.

Similarly, in the the Dominique Strauss Kahn case, there was a rush to judgment by the media, and their audiences all too eagerly jumped on board.  Bret Stephens wrote a great op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal about this yesterday: The DSK Lesson.  Here are some exceprts:

Let me confess: I was pretty much delighted by the way L'Affaire DSK seemed to be playing out...Not that I ever took any joy in the thought that a presumably vulnerable woman had apparently been raped by a man with a reputation for promiscuous and predatory appetites.

But I did enjoy the thought of this mandarin of the tax-exemptocracy being pulled from the comfort of his first-class Air France seat and dispatched to Riker's Island without regard to status or dignity. And I admired the humble immigrant who would risk so much for the sake of justice.

I doubt I was alone in feeling this: People generally, and columnists especially, want news that has the qualities of a parable—the surprise that turns out to be no surprise at all. With a story like DSK's, the temptation of a tidy moral tends to overwhelm whatever doubts might be cast upon it by a countervailing point of data.

...the media (broadly speaking) has too often been guilty of looking only for the evidence that fits a pre-existing story line. It doesn't help that in journalism you can usually find the story you're looking for..

But anecdotes are not data—which happens to be the world's most easily neglected truism. ...And the journalists who most deserve to earn their keep are those who understand that the line of any story is likely to be crooked.

Which is not to say that jurys or judges can't sometimes get it wrong, or that these people are innocent - just that we can reach different conclusions given the same set of facts, and that it is sometimes easier to believe the logical and compelling storyline.

 

 

 

 

Use plain language if you want more people to visit your blog and read your stuff

When I first started blogging, I think I tried to impress people with big words and long and dense posts, and quickly discovered that this did not go over so well.  .An article in Ragan's PR Daily reminded me of the importance of communicating clearly by using plain and simple language. Here is an excerpt.

The use of unfamiliar or complex terms interferes with comprehension and slows readers down. Readers may even skip terms they don’t understand, hoping to find their meaning in the rest of the sentence.Readers are not impressed by the use of complex words; they’re frustrated by them

It goes on to list 24 highfalutin words and their simpler alternatives (so, is "highfalutin" too fancy?)

The post also reminded me of a topic I saw a few weeks ago on Dan Zarrella's blog (this guy is pretty much a genius when it comes to the science of social media; you should subscribe to his email newsletter and read his blog if the topic is of interest). He has published a readability analyzer plugin for WordPress blogs that reports on how simple or complex your content is as you write it.

I think I will give it a whirl.  In addition, there are a range of utilities available (I am pretty sure that MS Word has one) for grading your content in terms of readability.

So, even if you find it hard to simplify language and like using big words, with all of these tools it is hard to justify writing dense text, unless you enjoy having a small audience for your content.

Hypocrisy Rampant in "When not to Pitch a Story"

There has been quite a bit of back and forth about the right time to pitch a story. Some of the voices make the seemingly reasonable point that in a busy time for news, when a mega story is breaking (like it did this week), reporters are focused on a particular issue and it's not the best time to try to get their attention with other things, namely your clients' or employers' desire for ongoing media visibility and attention. Others suggest that trying to relate client stories to the current news and interject them is opportunistic and in bad taste (as an example that comes from within the PR world, interestingly enough, Ragan's PR Daily advised: PR Pros: Don't Even Try to Pitch a Story this Week).

In making these arguments it is easy to blithely go along with the story line that puts the press on a pedestal and kicks PR to the curb. But let's get real here. The above narrative casts media and PR as polar opposites - with media being the pure and noble heroes and PR being the shameless promoters.

I am not interested in picking a fight with the media - that would not be good for my career - but I do think it is important to point out that it is not such a black and white world that we live in. After all, the vast majority of media are profit-making organizations. They hire reporters to write great stories that have catchy headlines to build audience and revenue. In short, they do these things for some of the same reasons that we write press releases and pitches - to draw attention. News stopped being about just news a long time ago (witness all the coverage about what Katie Couric is doing next and the state of network news).

I do think that there is such a thing as good and bad timing, and good taste and bad. We as PR professionals owe it to our clients and employers (after all, we are an extension of their brands) to know when to hold our fire and recognize when a pitch crosses over from being relevant and topical to something that reeks of opportunism. But I don’t think we should bury our heads in the sand and apologize for doing our jobs

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.

 

Damn, We are Good (and Stressed!!) - The Demands of the PR Profession

There's been much buzz and many tweets about an article today in Ragan's PR Daily.  It references a study by CareerCast that says that PR is the second most stressful field - ranking after commercial airline pilot (the most stressful), but ahead of others including emergency room workers.

This is not terribly surprising to me.  I find PR to be a rewarding profession, and I enjoy the fast pace. However, it is a service business, assuming that you work for an agency.  You have multiple bosses and many people to please: clients, agency management, team members, and of course the infuencers and media that you do your best to get attention from every day.

The story kind of reminded me of a post that I wrote for Fusion PR forum awhile back. Here is an excerpt:

The reputation of PR is not helped by the fact that many people outside the profession simply do not understand what it is about.

When you think about it, it is simply amazing that we go out there and get the job done every day, considering the many skills that the average PR person who manages accounts is expected to master. He or she must be a word smith; a storyteller; a good conversationalist; a salesperson; a customer support person; a marketing strategist; a manager and resource coordinator; an MC of sorts, to facilitate interviews and press events; and a media specialist.

Black and Bloomberg (Video Killed the Education Czar)

Bloomberg's embattled pick for schools chief, Cathleen Black, was removed from the position last week. In the end, it seems the empress had no clothes - or at least not everything needed to convince others (and herself) that she could do a good job as New York City schools chancellor.

I don't wish any ill will to Bloomberg or Ms. Black. The whole episode must be an embarrassment for both.

But I do like to riff on topics related to PR and communciations, and to spot and call out irony when I see it, and this episode was rife.

I think it is ironic that someone who comes from the media world was undone by the media spot lights. If it wasn't video and media training that doomed her appointment, it played a role, and showed how unprepared she was, according to this New York Times article excerpt:

Ms. Black struggled to grasp the complexities of the city’s budget process, despite intensive tutorial sessions that began on the day of her appointment and, according to advisers, never really stopped.

When her staff sought to prepare her for television interviews, through mock question-and-answer sessions, she tripped over basic facts and figures, including the process for deciding which schools to close.... Aides decided she was largely unfit for such high-profile appearances and all but ruled them out.

Ms. Black clearly could have used some more media training, she does not appear to be a very sympathetic figure, based on excerpts from the Times article Black Admits Being Ill Prepared:

A day after her surprise ouster as New York City’s top education official, Cathleen P. Black acknowledged that she was ill-prepared for the demands and visibility of running the nation’s largest public school system..

Although she endured stinging criticism of her management style and public statements as chancellor, she said that she was particularly irritated by unflattering snapshots of herself that appeared in the New York City news media.  “The worst pictures!” she complained.

...in an interview with Fortune magazine, her first since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg urged her to step down as schools chancellor on Thursday, Ms. Black also suggested that gender might have played a role in her rocky reception over the last three months.

CTIA Wrap: AT&T Steals Thunder, Proving Peril of Launching News at Shows

I just wrapped up attendance at the CTIA show in Orlando. It was two action-packed days, filled with client, media and analyst meetings.

CTIA is one of the few mega tech shows left., and it was great to walk the show floor and experience the energy and excitement. The sheer size of the Orange County Convention Center and number of exhibitors meant lots of walking and made it a challenge to get to everything on my list.

As I walked into the show on Tuesday, I was amazed to see a space carved out in the middle for CNBC, with lights, cameras and Jim Cramer blaring.  He and his panel were of course focused on the big news: the AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile (see below for more on this).

In my conversations, comparisons were inevitably made with CTIA shows past. One exhibitor crassly noted the "booth babe index" (actually, he used a cruder term, but I will spare you) as evidence that the show is back, after a couple of down years.

The show also proved the dangers of holding on to big news for release at an event like CTIA.  We know it is tempting, because the world is watching, and there is more press coverage focused on the industry at these times.

Yet shows are the opposite of a slow news day. so there is more competition for the headline and readers. And, as big and impressive as your news is, there is always much larger news that can come along and eclipse it.

As was reported in yesterday's Wall Street Journal article Sprint CEO Blasts AT&T Deal:

AT&T's surprise deal forced attendees across the conference to compete for attention. Samsung Electronics Co., for example, picked the CTIA conference to launch two new tablet computers.

Should People Get Media Training Before they use Twitter?

Over the past several years we have seen the PR field challenged as never before, and change, as tactics that outlived their usefulness were updated or fell by the wayside. I know this because I have lived and blogged about it - recall my PR Death Watch series of posts.

However a funny thing happened on the way to peace, love and social media understanding. Some picked their heads up and realized that: yes, traditional media still matters. And so do press releases (see Revenge of the Press Release).

And what about other conventions that may now seem quaint - like media training, and prepared statements?

In a world where everyone has a microphone, it does not take long before quite a few start to sound like those bores with the cringe-inducing speeches and wedding toasts.  I share below a couple examples by way of recent articles that prompted this post, with excerpts in italics:

Wall Street Journal - City Ballet A Twitter over Posts

New York City Ballet is set to become one of the country's first major performing-arts companies to govern its employees' posts on Twitter, Facebook and other social-media outlets.  And Devin Alberda, a member of the company's corps de ballet, is part of the reason why.

After news of his boss's drunk-driving arrest was made public, Mr. Alberda tweeted: "Thank goodness riding the subway while intoxicated isn't a misdemeanor offense," adding the hashtag "#dontfireme." In another tweet, he mocked a character in a production...

New York Times - When the Marketing Reach of Social Media Backfires

...what happens when behavior on social media is deemed antisocial? Two large marketers, Aflac and the Chrysler Group, are struggling to answer that uncomfortable question in the wake of incidents that took place within days of each other. The incidents, involving remarks on Twitter that were judged to be tasteless, inappropriate and insensitive, point out some inherent risks of social media.

It is interesting, because the very formality of public speaking or a press interview would normally put most people on guard; but put them in front of Facebook and Twitter, and they just blurt, oblivious of the consequences.

You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, and I don't think anyone wants an overly scripted world in which people need handlers to tweet. I do think some form of social media training is called for, and companies that haven't done so already need to come up with and enforce reasonable social media policies.

People who tweet or blog on behalf of a company (or even if they are doing so independently, but their name is closely associated) should go through some basic training akin to media training to govern the ins and outs of social media. Some of the rules of the road may seem to be common sense, but there are many gray areas and pitfalls.