Category: General

Tue, 11 Jun 2002 14:57:59 GMT

What does your boss think is key to reputation?

Hill & Knowlton along with Chief Executive Magazine and Harris Interactive have produced a report that looks at what CEO’s believe affects their organization’s reputation.

In a survey of 557 executives, the report found that:
42% believe unethical behaviour adversely affects reputation
49% believe negative print and broadcast affect reputation
13% quote rumors on the Internet
36% say disasters
and 35% litigation

Read more on the report here.

Mon, 10 Jun 2002 09:20:39 GMT

When PR people let down their industry

A recent story in the Guardian further implicates PR in underhand dealings and stupidity. According to the piece The Bivings Group was retained by Monsanto to undertake a ‘smear’ campaign against the Nature Magazine’s paper on GM Maize in Mexico. Accordingly our friends at the Bivings Group invented aliases and posted to Internet mailing lists.

Now it turns out there are some real, justifiable issues with the findings of the report. But rather than tackle the concerns, Biving’s ‘pseudonyms’ criticized it online.

Then when the Bivings Group were accused by a journalist from the UK Guardian of posting online they agressively denied it – even though it’s clear the postings in question were made by computers from the Bivings Group. More mud slung in our industry’s direction, more lying and more damage to the credibility of every PR professional. Well done all involved, you’ve certainly made our jobs easier and our reputation stronger…not.
(Some more opinion from Brian Kane’s weblog)

Tue, 04 Jun 2002 07:36:38 GMT

When technology bites back

Senator Joseph Lieberman’s (D) office recently sent out an e-mail press release to 400 reporters calling for a national broadband Internet strategy. The only problem was while the release called for more sophisticate technology infrastructure, the hapless Senator’s e-mial system couldn’t take the strain and has been spamming the same release to the same 400 reporters over and over again. You can read the full story on Newsday.

Thu, 30 May 2002 19:08:49 GMT

Looking after the details…

Interesting PR anecdote I heard today. A journalist attending the third in a series of different press conferences was delighted to find copius amounts of coffee, water and cookies. When he complimented the PR handler on the provision of the food and beverages, the journalist was informed that the chosen brands of cookies had been selected after testing had revealed they were the only brands not to make noise that would be picked up on the media microphones. Now that’s looking after the details! (and they didn’t make any noise!)

Wed, 29 May 2002 12:58:42 GMT

Reality PR 2.0

There’s a recent article on Silicon Valley.com entitled ‘Public Relations workforce: Feeling the Squeeze”, it follows on from dozens of stories over the past 6-12 months detailing PR’s fall from the heights and excesses of the Internet boom. There’s nothing new here, but it’s a timely reminder of how the PR industry milked the boom and exposed an extraordinary lack of business acumen.

Let’s not forget that during the boom, PR companies were hosting start-up beauty parades, asking entrepreneurs to justify why they should be added to the agency roster and then asking for exhorbitant retainers. This greed boom in the PR industry outstripped the excesses of every other professional discipline. The fact that the feathered farm animals are coming home to roost for many of these agencies is not a cause for pity or sympathy. As the old adage goes “if you live by the sword….”.

So PR now has to go back to responsibly managing business, working hard at finding new business and working harder at retaining existing business. What’s the problem? Those folks doing good jobs at competitive rates and tying activities back to their client’s objectives will thrive and prosper. Those dealing in ‘black magic’ and charging high unjustified costs will fade into memory. In effect, the market will decide and that is no bad thing.

One quote from the article that sums this up for me was from Upstart’s general manager Patty Lund. Now I must admit I was surprised by it, so maybe it’s out of context but the quote says; “What’s important to companies right now is revenue.” Hello? Revenue is ALWAYS what’s important to companies. The problem during the boom was that companies and the PR advisors lost sight of the importance of revenue. If your PR program isn’t helping directly or indirection to creating revenue – stop, rethink, re-plan and re-execute! Let me know what you think.

Tue, 28 May 2002 10:22:52 GMT

Weblog now updated!

I have successfully moved all my previous PR blogs here. Unfortunately they are all spread over just a couple of days but that was unavoidable! I’ll be adding more links to the left-hand column. If you have any thoughts on what you read here, by all means drop me a line at tmurphy@capeclear.com.