Category: General

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

You may have noticed there hasn’t been a whole lot of new content and thinking here this week.  Well I’m on the road and time has been in short supply.

To be honest with all that’s going on over at the Global PR Blog Week, I’m not sure there’s much need or demand for anymore PR content this week!

Highlights of day three include:

• Elizabeth Albrycht on the tools you can use to build an online community.
• Octavio Rojas on the potential of blogs in Spanish-speaking countries.(Spanish version)
• Alice Marshall on how to best pitch small business stories. (Alice also conducts an online interview with Bradley Peniston, Editor of Defense News.)
• Bernie Goldbach on the steps involved in online promotion and how to best use and run your blog..
• Robb Hecht on how PR can help companies manage conversations with their customers
• Angelo Fernando explores the art of telling “brand” stories and asks should CEO’s blog.
• Mike Manuel looks at online measurement.
• Don Crowther on the 5 stupidest PR tactics.
• Anthony Parcero tackles interactive PR strategies.
• Jim Horton looks at the potential and pitfalls of blogging in a crisis.

Philip Young will be contributing a piece on PR Ethics this Friday.  He is looking for practitioners to participate in his online survey.  You can find it here.

Finally Jay Rosen who was interviewed by Steve Rubel as part of Global PR Blog Week on Monday,  has been doing some thinking on PR.

He ponders whether PR people are beginning to forget about control and instead engage with their audiences.

“I’m not sure what to make of this. But with more and more people in PR talking about the need for transparency and genuine public interaction, and asking whether “spin” has seen its day, it is at least possible that a debate could break out– a split in the ranks on what is wise, responsible, effective and shrewd practice in a time of changing media platforms, vanishing knowledge monopolies, and shifting expectations. It would be natural for PR pros who blog to be out front on this.”

Personally I think the advent of the Internet and tools like e-mail and weblogs have effectively removed the illusion of control that many in our profession may have held.

PR firm Peppercom [Flash Warning!] have announced a new proprietary measurement tool for PR and it can also be used to measure sales and marketing campaigns according to MediaMap’s blog.

So two issues.  First of all Peppercom’s site is a classic example of why Flash navigation is the spawn of Satan (and yes they are the latest addition to the Flash Hall of Shame).

Secondly they have no details about the measurement tool on their site….

PS: You have to love the clicking noise effects on the site.

 

In case you thought that the Global PR Blog Week was going to be a cosy love in, there’s actually some great debate to match the fantastic content.

• Trevor Cook interviews Microsoft’s uber blogger Robert Scoble.
• Hans Kullin offers some sound advice on launching a blog for a services organization.
• Philip Young ponders whether ethics is good business.
• Don Crowther on the intersection of blogs and search engines.
• John Mudd looks at how blogs can contribute to the bottom line.
• Trudy Schuett on blogs for non-profit organizations.
• Roland Tanglao presents an argument for why PR is dead.
• John Cass wonders if Microsoft is in danger from blogs.
• Wayne Hulbert looks at blogs as a website promotional tool.
• Anita Campbell covers using blogs to spot trends.
• Evelyn Rodriguez examines blogs and thought leadership.
• Dave Austin offers a blog 101.

Is that enough content for you?

Meanwhile, Jim Horton has raised some hackles with his post today that  blogs maybe over blown:

“There is too much enthusiasm for what blogging can do. It is like discovering a new world and dreaming of what the land can be before one finds it has poisonous snakes and deadly spiders.”

Trudy Schuett takes Jim to task for his comments: 

“The only thing I can’t get my head around from your post is why you think
all these bloggers need an editor. They’re not all for general public
consumption, if you didn’t know that. (There is no insult intended here; I
just figure maybe you don’t have the whole picture yet.) Even on the
professional level, who is to know if the editor knows any better than the
writer?”

Meanwhile Ross Mayfield, sitting in his greenhouse, throws a stone at the PR profession:

“As a CEO, I have grown to distrust outsourcing PR beyond coordination, especially when we can extend our reach by ourselves authentically and the strategy is core. Oursource your PR and you may find they jump ship to share your ideas with competitors the very next day. A discussion on transparency needs to be complimented by one on ethics. If both are not addressed, sunshine is the best disinfectant and disintermediation is inevitable.”

Sigh… do you know I just don’t have the energy to waste on that post….

Luckily some very able-minded PR bodies try to put Ross back on the straight and narrow. Thank goodness.

The week is producing some great content, kudos to everyone who has contributed so far and to the architects of the event, Trevor and Constantin.