The Sarah Palin “Money Shot”

Posted on September 26, 2008 by rgeller

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

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.

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment

PR Tips for Entrepreneurs

Posted on September 25, 2008 by rgeller

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 (inactive), a blog for the VA-based business incubator of the same name.

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 and Do Some Market Research

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. If you’re going through new product development stages, market research will quickly become your best friend. You can do this via social media, or you can hire a company to help you with it. 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.

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.

Posted in Tech PR | 4 Comments

SNAFU Silences Flack’s Revenge for Two Weeks

Posted on September 22, 2008 by rgeller

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

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

The Death of the PR Pitch

Posted on September 3, 2008 by rgeller

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.

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PR Manager’s Secret to Client and Team Success? Try RSOI!

Posted on August 29, 2008 by rgeller

Managing PR teams comes with its share of challenges.  You want your teams to have what they need to succeed – the information, resources and support of clients and management.  You want to make sure that they have the proper training and know-how, and are well steeped in PR best practices and the proscribed methods of the agency.

Above and beyond that, you want to get out of the way and let them do their jobs.  Nothing saps morality more quickly than constant status checks and endless reporting procedures.  The latter also adds a big time sink.

At the same time, as a manager you need to make sure that the teams are firing on all cylinders, and hitting the mark in terms of generating results.  You need information.

There is no better recipe for taking the temperature of clients than to connect with them live, in real time.  That means sitting in on the team calls, and often picking up the phone to speak with them in between.  This is not necessarily to check up on the PR team and foster some kind of nefarious back channel of communications.  It is to show that you are there, that you care and are adding value to the account.

Also, it is critical to have planning and review cycles, and work together with the team and client to develop a PR plan that lays out the anticipated program road map for the next 6 months, and sets measurable goals.

I have found that you can take the pulse of an account in just 3-5 minutes, by having the team deliver an oral RSOI report for each.  RSOI is an acronym (pr. "R-Soy") that stands for Results, Setbacks, Opportunities and Initiatives, as follows:

Results:  Is the team generating results that meet the client’s expectations?  What specific results have been delivered recently, and how do these mesh with goals defined in the PR plan?  This is arguably the most important part of the equation, because without results nothing else really matters.

Setbacks:  Any program sometimes suffers setbacks, and it is instructive to get the bad as well as the good on the table for discussion and planning.

Opportunities:  Looking ahead, what are the opportunities that the team can leverage to make some noise and advance the goals of the program?  This generally does not refer to one-off opportunities, but major trends or developments.  Is there big news from the client side on the horizon?  Has a top competitor gone belly up?  Did the Wall Street Journal or Gartner just identify a trend that indicates the need for your client’s solution?  It is important that your team be on the lookout for marketplace trends and related news developments that can be used to help move the ball forward.

Initiatives:  It is important to have a shared sense of mission with clients, and part of this means working together on initiatives towards goals.  In evaluating where the program has been and where it is going, it helps to understand what initiatives – e.g. projects, such as trade shows, tours, events  – are in the works, and what this means for how the team will be spending its time.

RSOI provides a window into the status and direction of accounts, and can be an indispensable tool for getting a good sense of what is happening across teams and clients.

Posted in PR | 1 Comment

What Sold me on Twitter

Posted on August 27, 2008 by rgeller

My news radar has been tuned to “Twitter + PR” for awhile now, so I guess it is time that I shared my latest thoughts about the service.

Initially I was very skeptical about it.  Twitter seemed like just one more distraction, one more information channel to feed and another social network to master.  Do people really care what I am doing or thinking from moment to moment?  And do we need more noise, I wondered?

Anyway, I have since reconsidered.  What led to the turnabout?

I have to admit, peer pressure played a large role.  When something gets a lot of buzz, you want to better understand it before dismissing it out of hand.

As a PR person, though, what clinched it for me was the cajoling of my sister-in-law’s brother Tony, a Web 2.0 entrepreneur who got coverage for his company on TechCrunch through Twitter.

When I asked him how he did this, he told me that it was really pretty simple.

Tony followed the TechCrunch writer on Twitter and at some point discovered that they had mutual leisure-time interests, which led to Tony reaching out, a dialog and eventual coverage.

As I said in one of my posts on multi-channel engagement:

…multiple channels mean many different ways to
engage.  Collectively, the various communications and social media
channels surround people.  They lend context and tone to
communications. The more channels you can master, and the more you
participate in the various channels, the more your communications can
be on target and in context. 

Frequently, multiple channels can work
together … When done right,
your approach is not considered something to be
avoided, or even pitching, but becomes part of the conversation.

Twitter represents one such channel that is becoming increasingly important.  And, as I also blogged previously, some are encouraging the use of Twitter as a preferred channel for delivering pitches.

This also led me to wonder about whether there is a directory of journalists on Twitter.  I searched a bit and found this site called Media People Using Twitter, started by The Creative Team, a PR shop out of North Carolina.   It is a Wiki, so people can ostensibly add to it.

Not a tremendous list, but those in tech PR should recognize some very respected tech journo names.

For those just getting started on Twitter, there are many resources out there.  I found much of it not to be very helpful, including this video which is cute but very high level.   This one page I found on PCMech.com (Twitter: The User Manual You Can’t Find) offers some excellent and easy-to-follow tips.

But there is no substitute for just jumping in, it is easy enough to get started.  I have by no means mastered it but am working at becoming a more prolific Twitterer or Tweeter or whatever.  If you want to follow me and keep me honest at this, please do so by clicking here.

Posted in PR Tech | Comments Off on What Sold me on Twitter

Silver Lining in Enterprise Tech Spending

Posted on August 26, 2008 by rgeller

The New York Times had a couple of excellent articles yesterday, which should be of interest to tech PR and social media PR folks.

There is a silver lining in enterprise tech spending numbers, and it is in the clouds (both literally and figuratively).

The article: Gartner Tech Forecast: Cloudy and Getting Cloudier breaks down a recent Gartner report on the subject:

Spending on information technology worldwide, Gartner projects, will
grow at a rate a bit higher than global economic growth — up 10 percent
(4.5 percent adjusted for a weak dollar), to $3.4 trillion this year.
The weakness in the United States will be offset by the strength in
emerging economies…

But the information technology sector has become so large and so
central to the world’s economy that the spending total is not the place
to look. The top-line numbers, almost inevitably, mask the ferment
beneath.

The “ferment,” according to writer Steve Lohr’s analysis of the Gartner report, relates to the impact and growth of cloud computing, a technology.   Cloud computing (Wikipedia definition) is having a disruptive effect on the IT sector.  Its adoption will mean good things for those who supply related hardware, software and services, and bad things for other tech vendors.

If you are in tech PR, what are you seeing in terms of the state of business?

Also, in A Campaign Not Filtered by the Press, David Carr wrote about how Barack Obama is a taking his campaign directly to the people via social and mobile technologies.

Posted in Tech PR | Comments Off on Silver Lining in Enterprise Tech Spending

Reimagining PR: Out from Behind the Curtains

Posted on August 22, 2008 by rgeller

Lying on the beach for five days at a stretch – as I have done while on vacation in the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina this week – puts one in a reflective mood.  And one of the things I have been thinking about is that it would be nice to offer a positive counterbalance to my PR Death Watch series, my blog chronicle of the growing number of anachronisms in our field.

After all, it is fairly easy to pick off the profession’s old and tired habits, and ingrained ways of working that no longer seem to be effective.  But what about positive signs of change?  Why not propose a vision of where PR should go next, and how we can adapt and continue to grow?

There were many good questions raised in the comments and posts I referenced last week in PR Apocalypse Now.  My Reimagining PR series will strive to answer these questions and lay out a roadmap and direction, based on my own thoughts and by referencing the writings of others who are speaking out on the topic.

One positive development has been that PR people are increasingly coming out from behind the curtains, proving to the world that we can speak in our own genuine voices, and be smart and articulate.  This may be no great revelation to people who actually work in the field, but might come as a surprise to those who hold a cynical view of PR.

For too long we have labored in obscurity.  “You are not the story!” we have constantly been reminded.  Although this approach seemed to work well for years, it has not done us any favors because it has not promoted an understanding of the field, and, not understanding or knowing, people tend to assume the worst.

Now, whether it is on their own blogs, or by commenting or posting on others’, or through Twitter, PR are people are revealing themselves, cultivating their online personalities and personal brands.

In growing numbers, PR people are launching their own blogs (see Brendan Cooper’s PR Friendly list for August (inactive), which cites the top 100 PR blogs – I am thrilled that Flack’s Revenge is now on the list).

Back in May, Web 2.0 Working Group member Stowe Boyd proposed something called MicroPR as an antidote to pitch spam:

So, this is an additional argument for MicroPR: forcing PR firms to
approach us in the open, on open social flow apps like Twitter, and in
the small, where they have to jettison all the claptrap of the old
press release model. In the open, that can’t lie easily, or they will
be caught on it. In the small, they have to junk the meaningless
superlatives, the bogus quotes that no CEO ever mouthed, the run-on
phrases, the disembodied third party mumbo jumbo, as if the press
release were edited by God.

Blogging and other forms of social media have driven an ethos of greater transparency.  While all this transparency presents obvious challenges to those who want discipline and control in communications, it also presents opportunities for those who are first wiling to acknowledge reality and then take this understanding and adapt.

We are PR, hear us roar, it is a beautiful thing!

Posted in PR Tech | Comments Off on Reimagining PR: Out from Behind the Curtains

Hail to Election Season

Posted on August 20, 2008 by rgeller

I don’t do political PR, and this blog only dabbles in politics, yet as a PR person I must say I love campaign season.

Particularly when it comes to something as prominent as a presidential election, there is no better time to study communications strategies with the goal of learning about what works well and what doesn’t.

You can learn a lot about candidates by watching how they react to world events of the day, and by considering how they talk about their policies, campaign themes and how they communicate news and milestones.

On a second level, assuming you are behind the candidate, you want to be assured that he or she is savvy in terms of communicating and harnessing all available communications channels, as this will come in handy in governing and carrying out policies should the person win the election. (of course, the opposite applies too; as we have seen, sophisticated communications gambits can also be used to advance  ill-conceived policies  – see my post Stepford Wonks).

Finally, from a purely technical viewpoint – regardless of how you feel about the candidates and their policies – election season offers a good opportunity to watch a race and see how the candidates’ moves effect media coverage and the polls – and to deconstruct all this so that you can learn and apply these lessons to your field of PR.

The media often helps by conveniently breaking things down, as much coverage these days focuses on tactics and the race rather than the so-called substance  (we can debate over whether this is a good or bad thing, but let’s face it, it is a reality).

For example, just today the Washington Post had a great article about the Obama campaign’s extensive use of online and mobile communications channels – see Obama’s Wide Web.  And, just a few days ago, the NY Times covered the ups and downs of responding to smears on the campaign trail in the article How to Erase that Smea…, offering a lesson in reputation management.

Posted in Reading Files | Comments Off on Hail to Election Season

Just Send us the Press Release Please!

Posted on August 19, 2008 by rgeller

I joined the PR profession by way of engineering to sales support to tech marketing and then sales, until I finally realized that the career aptitude test that I took way back in the beginning – right after I graduated, the one that said "no, dummy you are not an engineer or a sales guy, you are a PR executive"  – was actually right, even though I had little idea at the time what a PR exec was or did.

And when I was in the marketing rung of my career, and just starting to flirt with PR, us marketing types used to wink knowingly amongst ourselves when discussing the proper role of the press releases in PR. The good journalists, it was said, viewed press releases as the last resort for a good story.  In short, the mere existence of a press release did not equate to a good story, and vice versa – good journalists could sniff out and write stories without the crutch of a press release.

However my experiences in the real world, working first as a freelancer and then at a PR agency for a total for twelve years has not squared with this assumption.  It seems that, for all the criticism of press releases – both the quantity and quality of them – the news media is conditioned to expect that anything newsworthy should be accompanied by a press release.

Unfailingly, when we set out to promote any kind of news, a good segment of the target media list asks to see a press release before committing to a briefing.  That is why I am convinced that the press release, whether it is a traditional one or of the updated social media release variety, is not going away anytime soon.

And that is why I implore our teams, regardless of what other materials we are using to support the campaigns, to also include press releases.  It it just easier than explaining why we don’t have one, and if putting the information in press release format somehow validates its news value, then why not?

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