The Portland Business Journal has an interesting story looking at the PR challenges facing the US Beef Industry following the Mad Cow scare.
Crisis communications in action.
Meanwhile, Dave Jung over at the B2Blog is the star turn on a nice introductory feature on blogs at the Grand Rapids Press.
(I’m still catching up, normal service should resume tomorrow!)
I am still struggling to catch up on last week’s events, however here are a few things that have caught my eye…
Silicon Valley PR pioneer Fred Hoar passed away last week. Jeremy Pepper has a touching personal post on Fred’s passing and in other sad news, Richard Bailey points out that UK PR pro Esther Kaposi also passed away last week.
The New Yorker profiles Gene Weber, an eighty-eight year old PR man still going strong.
Some tips on how to work with a PR firm…..
Hello. Well PR Opinions is back online after some much required rest.
A new year but some of the same old issues keep coming back.
While I was away, Towers Perrin, a (take a deep breath) global professional services firm that helps organizations around the world improve their performance through effective people, risk and financial management, published an interesting study that found that only 51% of employees believed that their employers generally tell the truth.
Now as we all know, good communication starts at home (ahem) and it looks like there are a whole range of issues there.
“These results reveal a worrisome employer-employee dynamic that should be a wake-up call to any senior executive or leader who will need to communicate with employees in 2004,” said Mark Schumann, Towers Perrin principal and leader of the firm’s HR Services business communication consulting practice.
Thanks to Joanne for the link.
PR Opinions will be on hiatus recovering from the Season’s festivities until January 12, 2004.
The new and widely covered US Can-Spam Act, which has been designed to address unsolicited commercial e-mail (though I haven’t noticed any drop off so far) is now in place.
So how does this affect PR communications?
Well, sending press releases via e-mail could be contrued as commercial e-mail, even though it’s not advertising per se. (Disclaimer: The following advice doesn’t include any legal input, you should consult your legal counsel for the full implications of the legislation) It’s probably best to understand the new requirements and where applicable amend your e-mail processes.
At the very least any “mass” PR e-mails should provide:
Secondary issues include:
The Can-Spam Act shouldn’t impact PR professionals who are using e-mail responsibly, but it makes sense to be careful and where possible adhere to its guidelines.
Welcome to 2004. Here’s the final part of my review of 2003…
September
We take a look at what you need to know about Blog Relations
It seems that bad PR doesn’t necessarily stop a company’s ability to grow a profitable business – just look at Exxon.
Alastair Campbell steps down.
What do you need to know about selecting a PR Firm?
Here are some tips on writing for the Web
PR Measurement is always a topic fraught with tension. Here are some resources on measurement.
During 2003 it became apparent that legal expertise was becoming as important for a job in PR as good writing skills. The RIAA are a great example of this dark new art.
We provided a few guidelines for posting PR information online.
After only a few months away Red Herring re-appeared online in September.
Another disturbing trend appearing in September, this time among corporate spokespeople, was MetaTagging
There are very few PR bloggers from large PR agencies and as a result PR blogs do tend to have an anti-big PR bias. The downturn has created a fantastic diversity of small PR shops and that trend is here to stay. But Big agencies aren’t going anywhere IMHO. They’ll remain relevant and profitable alongside the start-ups.
October
With election results coming in thick and fast, political observers were asking is political journalism becoming less influential?
Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism provided a fascinating look at the intersection of blogging and journalism and we also looked at business blogging.
Following on from the Nieman Foundation’s report, a blogging conference, Bloggercon, took a detailed look at the same issue with some interesting discussions from journalists across a whole array of fields.
In some good news for the PR agency world, Fleishman-Hillard was named as one of the hundred best places for working moms.
We looked at how good PR can’t fix a bad product, with bad services.
Meanwhile RLM PR argued that there is no need for boutique agencies – we disagree.
In the first of many blog-related research reports, Perseus Development Corporation estimated there were about 4.12 million blogs online – however 2.31 million of these blogs had been abandoned – that’s a long winded way of saying there are in fact 1.81 million active blogs.
What are the trends affecting online communications? We attempted to provide some answers.
Also Nokia seems to be one of the leaders in innovating with alternative marketing channels. In this case they targeted blogs for the launch of their 3650 phone.
Vocus released research that found that 92% of journalists use corporate press rooms for their stories, unfortunately they still don’t find what they are looking for…
The Media Center at the American Press Institute published a paper entitled “We Media” which looked at how journalism is being affected by new Internet technologies.
“Of the many horrifically destructive technologies of the 20th century, arguably the most dangerous of all is public relations. So when you hear this new stealth story coming at you, you’ll know you’re being framed. You’ll know someone is trying to have public relations with you.” – Alternet.org
“I have a dirty little secret. I like PR people. OK, I don’t like all of them, but I must admit that a lot of publicists have helped me in my quest to speak to the right person, set up an interview, give me background info. This might sound strange to fellow journalists (or may secretly ring true), but a few of my best story ideas came from flacks.” – Mark Glaser at the Online Journalism Review
November
November saw an interesting discussion on the role of PR People in a media interview. Meanwhile, contrary to the advice from some practitioners, PR Opinions advises practitioners to treat freelancers with respect.
Marketing in Europe continues to cause difficulties, we took a look at why we don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
There was a lot of discussion surrounding Industry analysts – particularly in the technology sector – in November.
PR Bloggers Richard Bailey, Stuart Bruce and Elizabeth Albrycht provided some valuable advice to PR students.
Meanwhile Phil Gomes tried out a media pitch via his RSS feed with some interesting results.
The UK Guardian looked at some reasons why the media need PR – though it’s a contentious issue! CNN looked at business blogging.
Tom Mangan evaulated the Marraige of journalism and blogs
While in the UK, the IPR released a 78-page report entitled “Unlocking the Potential of Public Relations: Developing Good Practice”. The report surveyed 812 professionals. In the US, a survey found that US PR agencies were better meeting clients’ needs in 2003 and PR Week found that Technology PR is on the way back.
Business 2.0 undertook an analysis of the effectiveness of the PR launch for the Handsrping Treo 600.
December
Reuters took an interesting look at the age-old strategy of hiding bad news.
MediaMap was acquired by Bacon’s.
PR Opinions provided an overview of RSS and PR and outlined why we believe that technology will never replace face to face communication.
More research on Blog Relations appeared. The findings included that over 70% of bloggers were open to PR pitches.
Australia’s The Age newspaper followed up the British Medical Journal’s article earlier in the year with a critical look at PR practices in the healthcare market
Donald Rumsfeld won the annual “Foot in the Mouth” award with this entry:
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns � the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
Since I posted that entry, I have had loads of e-mail from people who believe that it was an unfair award and that in fact it was a fantastic piece of oratory. I think the award stands..
This is the second part of our subjective review of the PR year. The third and final part will be published on Friday, January 2, 2004.
In the meantime:
Happy New Year!
June
The British Medical Journal (in what is the first of a number of such criticisms) raises a question mark over the role of PR firms in the healthcare industry
A US court finds that PR professionals have an inherent attorney-client privilege that protects their clients
Mediamap adds bloggers to it’s database of journalists and analysts.
Embattled Martha Stewart hits back with a new website, ads in USA today and her attorney handling her PR – didn’t they do a good job… natch. Kevin Dugan’s blog has been covering Martha’s fight in some detail.
Research suggests that trade magazines are faring poorly in the current economic slump.
PR Opinions provides a primer on Blog Relations.
One of the year’s most entertaining corporate battles, between Oracle and Peoplesoft moves into full swing in June providing an interesting PR case study.
As the number of blogs increase, the issues surrounding how you manage an employee’s blog become more defined. Corporate blogging policies may provide an answer.
And in the fight against buzz words, a new Microsoft Word utility, Bullfighter aims to help cut through the hype.
PR’s role in managing corporate reputation online comes under the microscope.
In some good news, research finds that PR is the most effective means of driving potential customers to your website.
Poor Lizzie Grubman, the erstwhile PR jailbird agrees to give a course on PR for $49. Reports on her course are mixed.
And in June we found out that Comical Ali is alive and well and planning a book… democracy has clearly come to Iraq.
July
Some more advice on the mystery of Blog Relations.
David Strom of VAR Business takes some time to share some common sense advice on media relations. Meanwhile we’ve some other sensible media interview tips.
A new XML Standard for the Public Relations sector has been created.
The management team at Financial Dynamics execute an MBO for �26 million
Microsoft PowerPoint gets another kicking, this time from the New Yorker.
AMD commits a PR faux pas by accidentally sending the entire press release plan for the rest of the year to selected reporters. It’ll certainly make any exclusives a little harder to set up.
Mike Vizard over at CRN explains how he sees RSS taking off.
Some more tips on dealing with those pesky bloggers:
“Preparation and thought are two much ignored parts of PR. Think about what you are doing. If you think you’ll help your client by whacking out a press release to a few bloggers along with your usual suspects. Think again.”
More on blog relations.
Jim Horton published an excellent article on Objectivity in PR
Finally, the Oracle-Peoplesoft Quote War:
“It’s like me asking if I could buy your dog so I can go out back and shoot it.” – Craig Conway, CEO, Peoplesoft
In response Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison quipped:
“I think at one point, `Craigey’ thought I was going to shoot his dog,” Ellison said. “If Craigey and Bear were standing next to each other and I had one bullet, trust me, it wouldn’t be for the dog.”
August
Has spam killed E-mail? Lockergnome’s Chris Pirillo thinks so. We’re not so sure.
Google launches news alerts.. a poor man’s clipping service.. maybe not.
Interested in best practice blog relations? We have some pointers here and here.
PR Week published its 2003 Global Technology PR Report. It’s all about globalization seemingly. I don’t think so…
The BBC released their excellent style guide.
PR Opinions publishes its beginner’s guide to RSS.
Meanwhile MarketingWonk unleased their spleen on the shortcomings of PR. We fought back weakly and then lost the will to live.
According to the Media Reputation Index the top three organizations in the US are:
1. The Walt Disney Company
2. Microsoft
3. Intel
Mitch Wagner wasn’t very happy with PR people in August and he made his feelings very clear. It’s recommended reading and provides useful feedback.
A very subjective review of the year…
January
PR Week published the aggregated wisdom of a wide number of practitioners on what they believed were the key challenges for 2003, these included:
Looks like most of those can carry over to 2004!
The Internet’s burn out reached it’s lowest ebb in January with a tongue-in-cheek auction on EBay for ZDNET�s entire Editorial Staff.
The economic climate was also reflected in the industry analyst business with Forrester acquiring Giga.
2003 was a very bad year for Microsoft PowerPoint. There was a lot of negative comment on the preponderance of presenters reading their slides. Read more here, here and of course the Gettysberg Address in PowerPoint!
Starting in January and continuing throughout the year was the discussion on how the Internet is affecting journalism (and indirectly Press Relations). There were a wide range of topics from how Blogs won�t change journalism to broader opinions on how the interactive nature of the Internet does offer some benefits.
February
In the first big PR mishap of 2003, Shepardson Stern + Kaminsky, a New York-based PR firm, e-mailed confidential client documents to journalists thanks to a virus (and ineffective anti-virus protection)
Google’s profile reached new highs in 2003, the Boston Globe had a fantastic feature on the company and how its Search Engine is changing online habits. Meanwhile Google snapped up Blogger and was rated the Internet’s #1 brand.
The discussion on how PR intersects with blogging also kicked off.
On the agency front, Burson Marsteller made the bold move into telemarketing, while other agencies offered free PR.
The Blogging versus Journalism discussion continued, PR Opinions comes down on the side of reason…
March
In March, the venerable Silicon Valley bible, Red Herring finally closed its doors.
The role of Public Relations in helping organizations with their Search Engine marketing began to gather some momentum.
Dr. Pepper’s farcial Raging Cow blog stunt hit the headlines, while Puma fought a losing battle with a whole range of bloggers about some “fake” Puma adverts that were winging their way from blog to blog.
And there was some good PR news in March! PR Websites are actually improving!
Finally, we had our first sighting of how RSS might help PR.
“The last part is having passion about what you do. If you’re an entrepreneur, they are passionate because it’s their lives. I went into another meeting where I spoke, and this woman raised her hand and said, “We’re salespeople. Can’t we fake passion?” My response was, “No. You can fake interest, but you can’t fake passion.” Richard Laermer, co-author of Full Frontal PR in an interview with EMarketer.
April
There was only one headline event in April. The War in Iraq. PR was never far from the headlines. And of course the War gave us the PR “Character” of the Year…. Comical Ali.
Meanwhile Nokia showed Puma the correct means of dealing with viral online issues.
My biggest rant of the year occurred in April, when John Karastamatis stepped over the line in lampooning our poor misunderstood profession.
It was also the month of the funniest PR satire of 2003 with Atlantic Monthly’s short story on the PR campaign for an American Pope. And the New York Post offered an Eight Step Program for cleaning up PR’s image.
On the book front, the enjoyable “The Devil Wears Prada” offered an alleged inside look at the Fashion publishing business.
CNN unveiled an innovative new service: Obituaries for the living
Finally, Corporate Blogs were being hailed as a new channel for communicating with diverse audiences.
“A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.” John Tudor.
May
May was the month that Jayson Blair became a household name and the New York Times showed that it’s not bad at its own PR.
In Australia, Pan Pharmaceuticals showed the danger of ignoring the lessons of the past by making a bad crisis a lot worse…
Microsoft had it’s own problems with the iLoo while SCO kicked off the greatest PR own goal of the year.
There were more thoughts on how PR can work with Search Engine marketing and news that a large corporation thinks the best way to address negative media comment is to exclude those media from future announcements…. ahem
The Blogging and Journalism discussion continued… and the world’s first blogumentary appeared.
A survey of 700 Business-to-Business marketers found that E-mail marketing to an in-house list (45%), Public Relations (36%) and Postal mail to an in-house list (28%) were the most successful marketing tactics.
This success didn’t reflect on the salaries of PR practitioners needless to say. While the salaries of finance and corporate PR practitioners were up, the technology and public affairs practitioners took a 10% percent dive.
PowerPoint continued to be pasted..’scuse the pun..
“Arthur hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realised there was a contradiction there and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.” Douglas Adams, whose anniversary occured during May.
1. Unfortunately I think that PR’s profile will continue to be attacked in 2004 as it has for much of the past decade! (Find out for yourself how much the profession hasn�t changed in the past twelve years).
2. PR agency spending will re-bound slightly in 2004.
3. As PR spending recovers look out for more selective PR agency acquisitions in 2004 to follow the likes of Applied Communications.
4. With the volume of spam still rising, RSS will continue to proliferate as a means of communicating with journalists, analysts, staff, customers, partners and communities, it may even begin to break outside the technology business � though it�s a couple of years away from mainstream. Also, PR people will increasingly use RSS throughout 2004 to monitor what�s going on in their clients� markets.
5. Look out for blogs and weblogs to move beyond the technology business into other business-to-business and consumer markets � more targets for you to track.
6. Your favorite magazines will begin to swell again as Advertising spend begins to recover.
7. However, staffers will continue to be overworked as publications refuse to spend until absolutely necessary. All the more reason to keep tight tabs on the freelancers in your market � they�ll be busier this year than at any time since the dot bomb.
8. Consumers will continue to become more sophisticated, which translates into more work for PR. They�ll use multiple sources for decision making and that means you�ll have to work with multiple sources to help your clients make sales.
9. 2004 will be a time when online measurement becomes commonplace and affordable � track the success of your tactics in real-time.
10. The next twelve months will demand a host of new skills from PR practitioners � search engine optimization for one will be an increasingly important skill. Also don�t forget you own communications, make sure you are involved in how your clients can effectively communication across all media from press releases to web sites�
Any trends you’d like to add?
One common theme that permeates most conversations I have with PR people these days is the decline in grammar and punctuation.
If you are one of those who bemoan the continuing failure of good grammar, then I have the perfect book for you.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves takes an amusing look at the growing problem of poor punctuation and I highly recommend it. It has been one of the surprise hits of the Christmas period in the UK.
To illustrate its style here’s the “fable” of how the book got its title:
A panda goes into a bar, orders a sandwich, fires a gun and heads for the door. Why did he do that? The barman calls after him. The panda tosses him a badly punctuated wildlife manual. “I’m a panda,” he says. “Look me up.” The barman finds the relevant page, which says, “Panda. Large black-and-white, bearlike mammal native of China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”
It’s not available on Amazon.com but you can order it from Amazon.co.uk. You could do worse than mandate it as required reading for all your colleagues!
Murphy's Law 