09/05

According to Wired, about 150 junk e-mailers have paid their $20 dues and joined the club.  See: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,60224,00.html

The irony is that spammers should feel a need to hang together.  I guess there is natural human drive to associate.  The next thing we'll hear is that the spammers club has launched a PR campaign to resuscitate spam's image.   It might be along the line that even ax murderers need love. 

(Scratch that.  I didn't mean it.  Don't spam me anymore than you've already done.  I promise to be good. )

On the other hand, I'm not sure I can be spammed anymore than I am at work.  Even with Spamkiller in force, I find about 600 messages on Monday morning in my e-mail.  If I bought even one bottle of penis-extender from all those offering it, my male member would be the length of a hose.  That doesn't include porn spams that flood the box like clockwork and come-ons for mortgages, business proposals from Africa and incessant pleas to buy a new domain ending in org or something else. 

Spammers are their own worst PR cases, and they don't get it.  Greed is what drives their millions of pitches daily, not concern for customers.  If they had concern, they would realize spam offends just about everyone.  They would then find a better way to send messages to gullible purchasers. 

There is one nice outcome spammers are producing, however.  They are moving Congress to ban spamming.  That comes under the plea, "Stop me or I'll do it again." 

I have nothing against bulk e-mail if it were used responsibly, but e-mail is such that it is nearly impossible to achieve a measured approach to contacting audiences.  There is always one more person driving to sell something to somebody and that person will not take his or her place in a queue.  Thus, the only logical outcome is to ban it all or to put in a system similar to telephone  solicitation in which one can take his name and e-mail address off all spam lists. That should help end spamming from U.S. operators.

Now if someone could shut off the Chinese spam I'm getting, I would be happy.  I can't translate it, so I don't  even know who I should be mad at.

09/04

The sad part is there are PR practitioners who think they can fool bloggers like they think they can fool journalists.  The second sad thing is that PR practitioners believe they can pitch stories to bloggers in the same way they pitch them to reporters. 

Journalists who run blogs, like Dan Gillmor of The San Jose Mercury News, are wise to PR practitioners who try to worm stories into online journals.   They don't get far.  See  http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/  .  A hint.  Journalists-bloggers don't take kindly to PR shenanigans.  And, they make sure anyone who has tried to fool them is a marked person.

What angers me is the presence of such practitioners.  If reporters detest these people, I abhor them.  They make my job difficult and force me to work hard to sustain credibility with the media. 

The best rule, it seems to me, is not to pitch a blogwriter.  Blogs are more personal opinion than news reporting, although many work hard at gathering news.   But if you must pitch a blogwriter, take the time to understand what the writer is interested in.   One might excuse a PR practitioner who cannot tell on  the basis of five or 10 stories what a journalist is interested in, but one should never confuse a blogwriter's interests if you read the blog for a day or two.   I cannot understand how a PR practitioner could ever contact a blogwriter without knowing what the blogwriter discusses. 

What also disturbs me and other blogwriters is how little PR people understand blogging. Where have they been?  What are they reading?  Do they ever look into the Internet? 

There are days when I am ashamed of PR.  When I confront practitioners' ignorance of online media, I wonder about the future of PR.  If we in PR are left on the sidelines, we have no one to blame but ourselves.  Don't curse fate or get angry with those who leapt in to learn online communications techniques.  Look in a mirror.

For more than 25 years, a group of practitioners have tried to teach the industry how to use computer and networking technology to communicate better, faster and less expensively.  We agree we failed.  PR people believe they are exempt from any medium not less than 50 years old.

Maybe the new generation of PR practitioners are better, but I won't wager on it.
 

 09/03

My grandfather on my father's side never found suitable work during the Depression of the 1930s.  He took whatever job that came to earn whatever money he could to feed his family.  It was not a pleasant life nor an easy one.  But he knew his responsibility, and he reconciled himself to it.  There is a fear today that entitlements that grew out of the Depression era have led American workers to expect too much by comparison with counterparts elsewhere.  (I don't mean Western Europe but developing countries, such as China and India, Eastern Europe and other low-wage environments.) 

Is it possible that American workers might have to give up protections to work?  It is hard to believe that would be the case, but then again, Japan is just beginning to emerge from 13 years of stagnation brought on by high expectations, bubble wealth and an inability to recognize that its productive capacity is moving East to the mainland.  It is unclear what Japan will do as it restructures industry. 

The U.S. is in the same situation with the exception that the country is so large, it has a great deal more inertia.  We could idle for decades -- not growing much but not retreating much either.  The net effect is that millions of laborers won't work much.  They will be underemployed.  This leads to dissension, as the idleness of the 1930s did.  It also leads to foolish government efforts to restart economies stuck in neutral because the fundamentals are wrong.  (See Japan in the1990s.)  Ultimately, the capitalist  knows that consumers must buy goods to allow workers to be productive in producing goods.  If consumers cannot afford to buy, then companies do not produce, employees do not work and the cost of living deflates.  (Again, see Japan today).  But along with a lower cost of living comes decline in living standards. 

I have long been puzzled by the notion that industry depends on consumers who buy, buy, buy.  What if consumers have what they need or cannot afford any more?  Is there a point of stability when an economy no longer grows much and most goods are replacements rather than additions to lifestyle?  And can workers reconcile themselves to live in such an economy?  We might be answering these questions sooner than we think. 
 

 09/02

America is learning again the hard truth of globalization.  Capitalism is not patriotic nor moral.  It is amoral.  Business completes economic transactions and builds wealth.  There need be only enough trust to do so and little else.  Caveat Emptor (Let the buyer beware) originated with the Romans.  It placed responsibility for honest completion of transactions on buyers and not sellers.  Two parties can be mortal enemies yet trade because they have self-interested needs.

Capitalists go where wealth opportunities lead them.  They might make noises about degradation and enslavement of workers, but they won't necessarily free workers if it costs them money.  That is why government has a right and responsibility to step in and set rules of competition.  That is also why free markets are rarely free.  They are guided markets.

In a world with relatively open movement of trade and jobs, the lowest common denominator wins.  Unions have tried to enforce labor standards on other countries and to boycott goods made in sweat shops but that is idealistic and not pragmatic.  Business is, above all, pragmatic.  It has a goal -- complete economic transactions and increase wealth for owners.  Whatever it takes to do that is what business will do.  PR practitioners should be prepared for hard questions from employees and activists. 

Yet, the irony of the situation is that business responds to consumer demands for better and cheaper goods.  These are often the same consumers they put out of work when factories move overseas.  If you don't believe this, look at the percentage of Chinese goods sold by "big-box" retailers.

In the long run, capital movement among countries has a leveling effect, but most workers can't -- or won't --  wait to pay for mortgages, cars and feeding and educating families.  And, they resist downward mobility, which many suffer anyway.

I think it is feasible, if this jobless recovery continues, for a protectionist movement to arise, and the Democrats would lead it.  It will be difficult then to defend the prerogative of companies to make money when there is pressure on them to remain in high-cost environments at a disadvantage to global competitors.  I don't envision Smoot- Hawley tariffs, but one never knows the future. 

Perhaps the hardest labor situation to watch is the difficulty of young workers to find suitable employment.  There aren't a lot of jobs in many industries.  And, it is hard to get a first break.  It is deeply disappointing to college graduates to learn that four years of study gained them little or nothing. 

The optimist says joblessness is temporary and will pass.  The Next Big Thing will arise, and people will work again.  The pessimist says there is no guarantee, and no one has identified the Next Big Thing.   Either way, PR practitioners will be called upon to defend or promote issues affecting labor. 

I don't know where I stand.  I know business has to lower costs and increase quality continually  to stay competitive.  I know it takes many fewer labor hours today to produce a ton of steel, make a car or run a farm than it did 40, 50 or 100 years ago.  But knowing this tells  me nothing.  What can the unemployed do with the knowledge? 
 

 09/01

My apologies for not writing.