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04/17 |
Out of the
Blue. The nature of a crisis is
suddenness. We dealt with one yesterday, and I still see the
newspaper in front of me with a major story that caused my hair to tingle.
I had been calmly skimming the financial pages during breakfast, and there
it was staring at me in large bold type. The story revealed a legal
action against a company associated with a client, but it threatened
to tarnish our client as well.
About all one can say is "Where the hell did that come from?" Predictably, the company involved has a strong difference opinion over the allegations, and it is a civil, not criminal action, but still, our client didn't need it. (Clients never do.) The day went from an orderly process to a scramble for a media statement and urgent consultation. Some businesses seem to run on crises. Its not that the companies are poorly run, it is that they have broadly scattered locations, like chain stores, with high consumer interaction. Inevitably something happens. There are predictable crises like slips and falls or parking lot accidents or belligerent shop lifters caught at the door of the store. There are unpredictable crises like a forklift running a customer down, a rack falling on a customer and crushing the person or a store employee going berserk. But with enough stores and employees, one can be sure of at least one or two unpredictable events a week. It must be exhausting. It also must be maddening when one finds a crisis might have been prevented with common sense. The worst type of crisis is one in which the company, or one of its employees, was clearly at fault. There's not much one can say, and tort lawyers are hovering ready to plunge for prey. The difficult part of this situation is that general counsel leaps in to protect the company and often harm its reputation while trying to save it. Today is another day. I think everything is back to normal. I'll find out when I get to work.
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04/16 |
Think Again. Everyone knows how you
contact media. You pick up the phone and call, knowing you will
never get through voice mail, or you write a "pitch" letter that lays out
an idea and put it into e-mail -- after you have crunched it to a short
paragraph, of course.
But new evidence indicates we should be rethinking how we pitch the media new ideas. The evidence comes from the Indiana University School of Journalism American Journalism Survey, which was reported on the Poynter Institute site here: http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=28844 The study reveals that:
Given this heavy use of the Web, it seems to me we should think about pitching through the Web as much as we pitch through e-mail or phone calls. That is, do we have a list of story ideas on our organization's web site that a journalist can pick up? Outfits like Media Map and ProfNet have wonderful services that bring reporters' queries to PR practitioners. Why shouldn't we try it the other way as well? For example, if your organization has three divisions, why not have a series of continually refreshed story ideas associated with the products, services and people of the three divisions on the company Web site? You could then alert the reporters who follow your organization to their existence. As you generate new ideas, you can backfile older ones but keep them for reporters who want to browse. Obviously, this idea won't work for everyone. Some organizations do not have any reporters following them, and it takes hard selling to get a reporter to listen at all. Other organizations, however, have an active following, and it might work for them. What does it cost to give it a try? |
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04/15 |
Good Idea. The Iraq War has produced
notable communications advances on the Web as news organizations scrambled
to tell the story. Here is one that deserves mention from The
Kansas City Star. It is a Military Families Weblog for
those left behind and trying to cope. Click here: http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/special_packages/iraq/families/ The nice part of the page is that it bundles many of the essential military family resources in one place, and it distills news applying to the families. It also reports war news when it affects the local community including the death of a Kansan from a Rocket Propelled Grenade. This is a wonderful service use of web logging. It is innovative because it doesn't forget those left behind but realizes they are active readers of the Star and in need of help. It is also perfect use of a newspaper's resources. Most papers focused on the war in Iraq. The Star realized it had a good mission at home too. There are other good examples of public relations and community service for the troops and their families. Home Depot is applying its knowledge of home repair to help military families whose husbands and wives are overseas. The beautiful part of this community service is that it plays to Home Depot's strength, as does the Star blog. Both are good cases for how community
service should be done. Play to your organization's strength rather
than dissipating energy in things that are quickly forgotten. I
dislike community service programs that dole out $50 checks to everyone
who comes down the block. It does little for the organization giving
it and for the one getting it. Spend real money on something
the organization does well. It plays to the core strength of
the organization and it addresses a community need in depth. |
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04/14 |
Civilization. Reports of the
looting of Baghdad and Basra place an exclamation mark on the cliché that
civilization is a thin veneer. Looters of irreplaceable
treasures in the Baghdad museum, thieves who pillaged the government
offices, thugs who smashed stores and helped themselves were Iraqis and
people like you and me.
War removed momentarily the rules of civilization and humans descended to savagery. This is not new or unusual. It happened in New York City during the blackouts of the 1970s. It happened in Los Angeles during the riots there. It happens in all wars -- Vietnam, World War II, World War I, The Civil War. Why should a PR practitioner care? Because PR communication assumes civility between message senders and message receivers. When civility breaks down, the response is force -- and force is a crude instrument as we have seen in Iraq. It punishes the innocent along with the guilty. Looting has raised real dangers for American objectives in Iraq. The U.S. may win the war but lose the peace. Winning the peace, unfortunately, will require greater use of force until objective reasoning returns. Then, and only then, can the message that looting harms everyone gain a hearing. As long as every man, woman and child is out for himself, social aspects of society have no meaning. As a Vietnam veteran, I saw the harm of war long ago. Morals and ethics fractured under the stress of life and death. Saigon was an open city in all aspects -- sex, drugs and black marketeering. I watched my own soldiers engage in it and was powerless to stop it. (Contrary to popular belief, I did not have authority to bar my men from going to brothels at night on their own time or even from shooting up drugs, which some of them did. I only had the authority to bust them if they didn't show for work in the morning.) The sad part is that these soldiers were law abiding citizens in the U.S., some with families they loved. It struck me then -- and now -- how they dropped the rules of society as soon as they left Hawaii where we were based. The moment they got on an airplane to fly to a war zone, they chose ethics based on immediate self-interest and gratification. Public relations should be based on long-term self-interest and good of a group. It isn't, but it should be. When we "spin" to win a battle of the moment, we risk the civility of communication required for our business. Yet, we do it anyway -- just look at PR in Washington D.C. No wonder many citizens have little respect for politicians. How you communicate is up to you.
Recognize the responsibility you hold. |
Thoughts copyrighted 2003, James L. Horton