Month: July 2004

Rarely can two weekly magazine covers have such stark contrasts. 

The ebullient Steve Jobs staring from the cover of Newsweek.  The man who has successfully brought Apple back from the abyss, through the iMac and the iPod, to become a company that is once again riding high on strong growth, profitability and happy customers. A company that many wrote off as dying and irrelevant throughout the 1990’s is back and growing.

Newsweek’s cover and lead story on the iPod and Apple’s continued road to recovery is an amazing PR coup – similar to the famous issue of Time magazine with a cover story on the success of the iMac – with gushing customer testimonials from both journalists and consumers.

Kudos to Apple’s PR and marketing folks, not just for the coverage but for a good all-round marketing job.

“In just three years, Apple�s adorable mini music player has gone from gizmo to life-changing cultural icon.”

Now contrast that success with poor Sun Microsystems.  Sun is also on the cover of a national magazine this week, but the story is somewhat different.

Sun’s CEO Scott McNealy is under siege. Sun has mounting losses and Scott has to deal with anonymous sniping from former employees and executives.  Sun has a range of major challenges, though with cash in the bank, a “friendship” with Microsoft and growth in the server business once again, things may not be quite as terminal the BusinessWeek cover story implies.

One thing is for certain however, Sun face one hell of a PR challenge to get the company back on track.

If one company could empathise with Sun’s predicament it would have to be Apple.  Sun’s woes are comparable to Apple’s plight in the 1990’s. In fact, given that Apple was prenounced dead, dying or irrelevant throughout the media at one stage or another, you could argue that Sun is in a better position.

“Alas, it was not to be. He badly underestimated the severity of the downturn and dismissed customers’ desire for low-end servers. As time wore on, the losses piled up, and McNealy’s high-minded resolve began to look to others like simple-minded obstinacy. One by one, his team lost faith and departed. All told, almost a dozen of McNealy’s most trusted lieutenants have left over the past three years, including Zander, Joy, and John Shoemaker, chief of the server business. Like many others, Masood Jabbar, Sun’s longtime sales chief who retired in 2002, says he admires McNealy’s courage. But the standoff became counterproductive. “The fight just didn’t seem worth it anymore,” says Jabbar. “It was an untenable situation.””

One things seems certain, the technology business is on it’s way back….

Martha Stewart’s continuing travails provide an intriguing look at how PR can help and hinder individuals and organizations at a time of crisis.

Kevin Dugan has been closely following developments since the end of last year and has been keeping a mini-blog on developments.

“Stewart�s first public appearance during the scandal was the most damaging of all. We could note this snafu proves out the importance of media training, but lets consider the bigger issue of brand strategy. Crisis communications� and media training’s role in a brand strategy is to preserve and reinforce the brand�when used proactively. Far too often, they’re used reactively with mixed results.”

From Martha’s website, Martha Talks:

“Many people have asked me what they can do to help at this juncture. If I can ask just one thing of the public that has benefited for many years from my work and the creative output of my company, it would be to continue to support Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, regardless of what happens to me. Remember, please, that this was a personal matter that, because of the power of the press and the persistence of the government, spilled over onto an uninvolved company, harming all the people who labor so very hard, doing such admirable work. Please keep the company alive and our employees doing the jobs they love.”

Some better news for Public Relations.

The Scotsman newspaper has a story on how Public Relations practitioners (or in their terms “spin doctors” urrgggh) are moving up the organization chart.  The piece is built around an interview with Anne Gregory, President of the UK’s Institute of Public Relations.

“The nature of communications has changed and so has our role,” she said. “What is now required is somebody to understand the business, somebody who will bring in outside intelligence and has a more profound understanding of what is happening. Gone are the days when putting out the company line is enough, or just keeping the press at bay.” 

And so say all of us…

The Los Angeles snafu over Fleishman-Hillard’s dealings with the city continues.  The LA Times (free registration required) reports that:

“The former employees of the local office of Fleishman-Hillard Inc. said they were encouraged � and sometimes told � to submit falsified time sheets to the DWP to make as much as possible from the municipal utility, which was considered a “cash cow.””

“The attitude that was handed down to us was that you get as much as you can because these accounts may dry up tomorrow,” said Greenwood, who quit Fleishman in 1999 after a year. “There was a monthly billing figure that we needed to hit, so if it meant making up stuff, we made up stuff.”

This appears to be fairly damning stuff. However, Fleishman-Hillard are actively defending the allegations:

“Anthony M. Glassman, a libel lawyer retained by Fleishman last week, called the allegations “unfounded accusations by biased sources.” He noted that former employee Greenwood is the daughter of Noel Greenwood, a former Los Angeles Times senior editor who retired in 1993, and questioned whether there was a “relationship” between other former employees and The Times.”

Kline said Fleishman could find “no allegations of unethical behavior” in the written report of Greenwood’s exit interview. “Other than recording her own personal time, Diana Greenwood had no responsibility for preparing invoices or billing any clients, including DWP,” Kline said.

There are two sides to every story.  Hopefully the truth will emerge in the end…

PR Week has published the transcript of an online chat between PR Week Editor, Keith O’Brien and Constantin Basturea, Trevor Cook, Steve Rubel and BL Ochman.

“Rubel: It’s not about controlling the message. It’s about pushing it in the right direction so the community controls it. And the journalists know it. Companies don’t control the message any more; the customers do.
Basturea: First, the whole concept of a corporate message will have to be reconsidered.”

It’s often said that the victor gets to write history.  Except now with the Internet you have to be careful.

If you try and re-write history, it’s very easy for others to check the validity of your claim.

Credibitility online is very difficult to build, but very easy to destroy.

As part of the article I penned on the State of Public Relations, I conducted a brief online survey to gauge how practitioners felt about the current state of PR and where we are going.

There were 52 respondents and their views on the challenges and opportunities facing PR were very interesting.

The number one challenge facing the profession, according to the survey, is identifying, understanding and using all the new communications tools (31%) that are becoming available. The second most popular challenge is the need for better education of clients on what PR can and cannot achieve, and helping them to better understand the potential of new tools (18%).

When asked about the opportunities for PR, respondents chose the potential of the new tools such as weblogs, RSS etc. as the #1 opportunity for the profession.  Surprisingly, the second biggest opportunity (18%) was promoting more ethical, transparent practices across the profession. I’m sure that will surprise PR’s detractors….

For more on the findings, you can read the full article here.

Well, Global PR Blog Week 1.0 came to an end on Friday, and if you haven’t already, I strongly recommend you visit the site and read through the incredible PR content.

The amount of effort put in by everyone from Constantin and Trevor in pulling the event together, to Elizabeth* and Anthony Parcero (his blog is currently down) working with content as it was published, not to mention all the various contributors, was immense.

I have added the links to the last couple of days stories here, as much for my reference as anything else.

Fantastic event and a fantastic PR resource.

• Kevin Dugan has a well time piece on Martha Stewart and her ongoing crises.
• Colin McKay on the basic principles of crisis communication.
• Steve Rubel interviews Dan Gillmor.
• Jim Horton on blogging in a crisis.
• Richard Bailey on PR professionalism in the UK.
• Constantin Basturea on “The New PR”.
• Jeremy Pepper interviews a number of PR luminaries in a piece called the “Battle over PR”.
• Robb Hecht interviews Seth Godin.
• Philip Young on Ethics in PR.
• Don Crowther on the seven must have elements for a crisis communications kit and his thoughts on some trends for PR.
• Chris Bechtel on the new dynamics of PR.
• B.L Ochman on what your company could do with a blog, an interview with Steve Outing and some tips on pitching blogs.
• Matias Fernandez on how PR can facilitate learning inside an organization.
• Yours truly on the state of PR.

Footnote:

*Thanks in particular go to Elizabeth Albrycht, who managed to spot a major layout mistake in my own contribution. You can’t beat attention to detail!

Well I’m coming to the end of a busy week.  I managed to get my contribition to the Global PR Blog Week completed and it’s now online.

Normal services will be resumed on Monday, have a good weekend!

�It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness . . . it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair . . . in short, the period was so far like the present period .�
Charles Dickens, Tale of Two Cities

Dickens could have been thinking about the current state of Public Relations when he penned those lines nearly 150 years ago. Public Relations is an industry with schizophrenic tendencies. On the one hand, PR has enjoyed a prolonged period of prosperity both in terms of fiscal growth and its transition from the periphery to become a pivotal component of the marketing discipline. In short, PR has succeeded in obtaining greater influence, value and awareness. But that�s not the whole story.

Public Relations is still widely misunderstood. The popular perception of PR is driven by high profile �practitioners� whose professional conduct often bears no resemblance to the daily working lives of most PR professionals. PR is also faced with a range of challenges from the significant changes taking place in how people receive and use information. While the traditional media and PR tools continue to play an important role, practitioners are faced with new technologies and new audiences that require new thinking and some brave decisions.

Public Relations in 2004 is indeed, a tale of two professions.

For the full version, please visit Global PR Blog Week 1.0