Flack's Revenge

I read a WSJ article yesterday (Zookeeper Courted Danger to Attract Press and Visitors), about a zoo publicity guy who got bit by a Cobra, and also lost two fingers to a chimpanzee, all in the name of his craft.

It made me reflect on my career, and also consider the experiences of my colleagues regarding the following question: what is PR’s most dangerous game? How far have you gone in practicing PR – did you ever put yourself in harm’s way?

I am in tech, and the question brought to mind an article I had read, about the most dangerous gigs in the technology field – it seemed like a ridiculous question as you don’t normally relate high tech to high risk (at least in terms of physical safety, anyway). Sure enough, the article cited jobs that involved fixing undersea cables and climbing communication towers.

I am almost embarrassed to ask the question, as it is hard to even talk about danger in our field when you consider the risks that some of our counterparts on the media side take – e.g. the journalists that work in war zones and repressive countries, and the lives that have been endangered and lost as a result.

Looking back on my career in tech marketing and PR, it has been relatively safe – apart from the threat of being trampled at some publicity event, or suffering ill effects from too much (or bad) food and drink at industry mixers and trade shows, there really is not anything that interesting to report (and even that is not so interesting). But I am sure there must be some good stories out there!  So please share if you have one.

Some people wonder how I find time to contribute to a number of blogs and still get my “day job” done. The answer is, I love to write and I also find it therapeutic. Plus, blogging is pretty much part of my job these days.

There is a feeling of great freedom that comes with being able to write about anything I want. And I find inspiration in some pretty odd places. For example, not long ago I wrote about the juxtaposition of comedy and tech PR, after hearing a great routine on the comedy channel of Slacker Radio.

While running just the other day, and listening to Slacker on my BlackBerry, I heard another great routine from the now deceased George Carlin that reminded me of my work.
Carlin was about as left as you can get, and was radical and anti-business in his views.   I found much of his stuff over bearing and preachy, and not laugh out loud funny – amusing at best.  But I did love his love of words, and he famously chronicled hypocrisy, and how we torture language.

The bit I heard was about euphemisms, and how an ad-driven culture waters down language and makes it needlessly complex.    He starts:

I don’t like words that hide the truth. I don’t like words that conceal
reality. I don’t like euphemisms, or euphemistic language.
And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Cause Americans have a
lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the
truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves
from it, and it gets worse with every generation.

He cites as an example how the phrase “shell shock” morphed to battle fatigue, operational exhaustion, and finally post-traumatic stress disorder. In the process, he said, the pain is completely buried under jargon.   He advocates simple, honest and direct language.

These words can just as easily apply to tech PR and marketing.  Examples of confusing terminology abound in enterprise tech. Why say “enterprise data center” when you can say “computer department?” Why “seamless, end-to-end connectivity” when you can say “works together?” Or “cheap parts” instead of “commercial, off-the-shelf components.”

And who it to blame for the evolution of jargon? Some might say analysts craft jargon this to justify their existence; corporate marketing departments use it, because they are caught up in the culture and want to sound like others; and of course, some might point their fingers at marketing and PR agencies – they coin words to differentiate and use jargon to make clients sound like they are in with the in crowd (or sometimes out of sheer cluelessnes and lack of understanding about what they are pitching).

I blogged on this topic previously, at Fusion PR Forum.  I’ll be coming back to it again soon, so please stay tuned and feel free to share your thoughts on it.
By the way, if you too are interested in comedy and PR, you should stop by Newsvetter and check out Andrew Fowler’s toons and observations.

Some have railed against the press embargo (Michael Arrington, most loudly and notably; see TechCrunch stories Death to the Embargo and The Last Has Fallen; The Embargo is Dead).

The embargo is an agreement between news sources and the media to hold off on publishing a story until a specified date. It is generally tendered to multiple news organizations at once (otherwise, if the agreement is made with just one outlet, the correct term would be "exclusive").

Embargoes help those looking to get attention for news via a coordinated effort that ensures that the news appears on the desired date to maximal effect.

Detractors say that embargoes can compromise editorial integrity because they are essentially serving the interests of the source and hold the outlet captive to certain conditions (journalism purists argue that reporters should report news when they learn about it period, and not go through some negotiation that forges an all too cozy relationship between the outlet and source).

Others, like Arrington, rail against the unfairness of embargoes as sometimes they are broken, say when one news source decides to ignore the embargo and goes out first with the news.  In most cases, there are no repercussions to the offender, and the media that followed the rules suffer because they lag with the story.

Practices vary from industry to industry, however in general I think it is safe to say that embargoes remain a fact of life in PR and journalism.

You don't have to look too far to see where they are used.  Just consider the movie industry; reviewers generally hold off on their reviews until they see the advance screening just before the movie is released, so that the articles appear when the movie comes out.

They are still done in tech, the area that we work in and Arrington reports on.

The primary challenge from a PR practitioners standpoint – and the other side of the Arrington complaint – is that it is getting harder and harder to keep information under wraps so that the embargo does not get prematurely broken. The increased transparency driven by social media makes it likely that someone in the trusted information chain will publicly blab before the agreed upon date.

One illustration of the power of the embargo (and a beautiful if controversial example of upstart new media cooperating with big guns media) is the deal that Wikileaks cut with major news organizations like the NY Times regarding Afghanistan war intelligence reports. The story somehow managed to stay under wraps until three large publications simultaneously went live, and Wikileaks got much more attention for it (and for Wikileaks in general) as a result.