The head of a large information technology company forwarded a link to a CNN Money story on “Millions of SOPA lobbying bucks gone to waste” and provided a pithy editorial comment:

“The power of PR!”

Definitely. Smart PR strategists can mobilize public opinion through social and traditional media to make statements, move public opinion and change behaviors. In the case of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), CNN reported that “The controversial anti-piracy bills that attracted tens of millions of dollars of lobbying for and against the proposed laws ironically were killed by free publicity.”

The story noted:

“Old media companies spent huge sums of money in support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). Those opposed — Internet and “new media” companies — lobbied hard and spent gobs too, though far less than their more organized rivals. But Silicon Valley had a trick up its sleeve that trumped the millions of dollars more in lobbying muscle and the more established Washington presence of the old media guard: They reached out directly to their users for free.”

The story goes on to cover how Wikipedia shut down for 24 hours and Google blacked out its logo in protest of the bill. The public upheaval forced Congress to drop the bills, at least for now.

On the flip, side, corporations can be overwhelmed by a lack of PR strategic thinking when they launch a new business initiative with properly considering the consequences of their actions. Two recent examples: Bank of America and its $5 ATM charge and Netflix changing its business model.

NPR nailed the issue the day BofA made its announcement:

“JEFFREY BROWN: Big banks and the question of their profits have been the source of plenty of public anger since the beginning of the financial crisis. Now new fees for consumers are putting them in the spotlight again.”

The Los Angeles Times covered local protests, including the occupation of a branch by protesters. Its story offered a keen observation:

“This frankly is just an incredible marketing and PR debacle,” said Bert Ely, an independent banking analyst. “They roll this thing out with no testing, make it nationwide, it’s higher than anybody else. What kind of reaction do they expect?”

Huffington Post and others covered BofA rolling back the fees, with recalcitrant quotes.

For Netflix, as covered by Gable PR earlier, it started by raising prices by 60 percent and came back two months later to apologize while announcing the split of the company into two. They failed from a strategic planning and PR perspective to think about image as a part of corporate strategy, especially when one has built such a strong brand. They need to do things right and also do the right things.

Bottom line: The power of PR and its flip side – lack of strategic PR thinking – are essential for consideration in any action that can impact brand image and reputation.

Fully Disclosed

Posted by Tom Gable

PR firms are often the driving force behind helping clients build buzz, brand identity and even sales volume through promotional blogging and tweeting, Facebook pages, product reviews, restaurant and hotel tips and more. Beyond advancing the art of social media, firms need to ensure that they are equally up to speed on FTC guidelines or face possible legal action, according to two lawyers from Davis & Gilbert, New York, during a presentation to a quarterly meeting of IPREX recently in Toronto.

The lawyers, Michael Lasky and Gary Kibel, told the PR pros from more than 40 firms on three continents that the FTC has continued to update its guidelines about bloggers and others being truthful and reliable.

“And this isn’t just a feel good; it’s a legal requirement,” said Lasky, who chairs the PR practice at D&G. He provided a handout that summarized the FTC guidelines, including this summary:

“The Guides have been updated to ensure truth in all media, including blogs, social networking sites, and other new media. The basic principles of the Guides remain the same — endorsements must be truthful and not misleading and if there is a connection between the endorser and the marketer that would affect how people evaluate the endorsement, that connection should be disclosed.”

Clients and their PR firms can be held liable for unsubstantiated claims, so Lasky and Kibel stressed that PR firms need policies and procedures about expectations for proper behavior on both the agency and client side of the equation. This includes working with third parties, such as hiring people to blog and tweet about a company and its stock price, services or products, or take negative shots at its competition as well.

The lawyers provided an example in one of their publications about complaints being filed against Ann Taylor for giving gifts to bloggers and asking them to blog about an event. The FTC found that several bloggers posted about the event without disclosing the gifts. No action was taken because Ann Taylor had created a written policy stating that it would not issue gifts to bloggers without first instructing them they must disclose the gifts. There was a sign at the event instructing bloggers to disclose the gifts if they posted about the event. Case closed.

Lasky and Kibel outlined several top blogging practices clients and their PR firms should follow:

1. Have a policy.
2. For bloggers, be forthright — disclose any material connection.
3. For clients and their agencies, monitor their bloggers to make sure they make the necessary disclosures. If you see something misleading, unsubstantiated or not reported accurately, take action.
4. In hiring a blog service, companies and their agencies must provide guidance and training about the necessary disclosure.
5. Employees of the marketing or its PR firms should clearly disclose relationships. Such as PR firms blogging about a product from a client.
6. Even street team members who get consideration (reward points, etc.) for their work must disclose the details.
7. When celebrities are paid, they must disclose (Lasky and Kibel provided the example of Armstrong Williams, commentator, who was hired by a PR firm to promote the “No Child Left Behind” program on CNN).
8. Have spokespeople go through extensive media training to ensure they understand the disclosures.
9. On level of disclosure, analyze the audience.
10. You don’t know it all. Seek legal assistance.

In another case, an agency was hired to endorse a client’s gaming application. Its people gave the game high ratings. The agency failed to disclose that it received a percentage of sales of the games as compensation.

Disclosure can be as simple as adding parenthetical notes in the copy (“Company X gave me this product to try.” “Product Y was sent to me by the manufacturer.” “Wineries whose names are preceded by an asterisk * provided samples.” “Agency Z is providing blogging and other services for Client A.”).

Some use hash tags in their tweets and Facebook posts, such as #ad, #paid and #sponsored.

Bottom line: disclose, and have the disclosure displayed where it can be easily found. The lawyers said trouble awaits when the disclosure is buried three levels deep on a website.

Blowing up the Brand

Posted by Tom Gable

Recent analysts reports, coverage in the major media and the Twittersphere are being less than kind to Netflix and its two recent corporate announcements: raising prices by 60 percent; and coming back two months later to apologize while announcing the split of the company into two (Netflix and Qwikster). In looking at it from a strategic planning and PR perspective, the best companies incorporate image as a part of corporate strategy, especially when one has built such a strong brand. They do things right and also do the right things. Netflix appears to have advanced toward bursting its own brand bubble through eight easy steps:

• Raised prices seemingly without much consideration for the existing customer base, its needs, wants, expectations
• Went for a big number rather than incremental increases
• Provided a rationale that didn’t ring true and made many long-term customers feel betrayed by the brand
• Did it all top down and one-way in a CEO voice rather than human voice
• Didn’t join the conversation; didn’t use social media to actively engage its many audiences
• Waited a couple of months to apologize and then do it with an amazing lack of sincerity
• Seemingly as an afterthought, changed a successful business model to confuse customers, analysts, and the stock market
• Gave competitors openings to attack, reposition the company, declare pricing advantages

And if you are really successful, here’s what you can expect: 50 percent drop in stock price and market capitalization, enmity versus admiration, lack of support in the financial community (buy and sell side analysts), a zillion Twitter and Facebook comments, a Hitler meme or two, and confusion among consumers on how to order and from whom when you split the company, create a new brand name and dilute the brand image.

David Pogue, columnist for The New York Times, parsed the apology:

“Ah. O.K., good. We’ve seen this movie before. Corporation bumbles, apologizes, makes things right. Business schools take note. Life goes on. But this time, Mr. Hastings did not follow the formula. He only pretended to. He goes on to say that the new higher prices will stick — and, worse, Netflix is about to break off its DVD-by-mail feature into a completely separate entity, called Qwikster.”

The PR and marketing blogs offered good insights.  Mr. Media Training cited six reasons why the apology failed.  Liz Goodgold, of Redfirebranding, provided four ideas Netflix should have used before going down the primrose path to greater profits.

In summary, another NYT story delved into the reasons for raising prices (to generate more income for acquiring content from the major studies for streaming). The “self-inflicted” wounds could have been avoided with better planning for an integrated and strategic evolution of what were in actuality major change initiatives at Netflix.

Words of Wisdom

Posted by Tom Gable

In the past few months, we’ve participated in three repositioning and branding sessions – two for clients and one in a seminar by a respected branding guru. We found a common thread running through all of them and one we wish could unravel quickly: the creative types all relied on hackneyed, trite and empty phrases in trying to position or reposition a company, then promote its attributes.

PR is decidedly different from advertising and marketing. In trying to earn our media coverage, we rely on telling a good story with facts. Branding and positioning sessions are designed to create distinctive personalities and voices for an organization or institution that resonate with the multiple target audiences. The basic concept is to develop a tag line or tag lines, core values and the supporting evidence to support the brand position. All well and good, except when the attributes and supporting evidence slide into vagueness.

For journalists, PR professionals on the hunt for earned media coverage or any other students of the English language, branding exercises can be painful, particularly when the die has been cast. Good manners prevent one from chiming in when the host digresses into the new core message for the client saying that it is “a leader in the evolving XYZ industry.” Plus, the client delivers “innovative solutions” that are “at the forefront” of this “evolving” industry. With two evolvings in two sentences, it is obvious that this organization is truly leading Darwinian change in its industry.

The three brand masters promoted use of “leading” in many ways, without proof of principle. The claimed attributes include words such as unique, progressive, leading-edge, next generation, industry standard, prestigious and world class, among others. I won’t bore you with additional details. Previous screeds covered the use of leading and solutions, ad nauseum.

Big questions we can all ask in trying to position our clients or the organization we work for: can we truly differentiate against the competition, in what ways and can we provide ongoing proof of principle over the next two to three years with real stories, facts and details, not vague words? If so, you have made a major advance in branding success to the ultimate benefit of image, reputation and even achieving desired business and marketing goals.

Social Evolution

Posted by Lauren Miller

If you sit back and visualize about how you keep current on what your friends are doing or check the latest entertainment, recreation, industry specific or other breaking news, how do you think you spend the majority of your time?

The latest results from eMarketer show the world spends more time on social media than email, browsing or other online activities. Once a novelty, social media has become part of everyday life and has even become a verb (i.e., “Facebooking”). The eMarketer study shows 58.1 percent of Americans manage an online profile, with the worldwide number at 61.8 percent.

How did we get here? From Flicker and YouTube to SlideShare and LiveJournal, there is a social media platform for almost every letter of the alphabet and every Internet user. No matter what your platform of choice, you have probably noticed something interesting: Your use of these sites has evolved and migrated along with your life (think about changing demographics, interests, lifestyle, etc.).

Maybe over the last few years you’ve become a parent, started a new job, relocated or have become a job-seeker. If you look back over time, you can actually trace your personal and professional development based on how your posts have changed.

As an example, for young professionals currently in their 20s, in high school the craze was all about MySpace – the pictures you uploaded, the music on your page and the number of friends you had. Most teenagers posted fun party pictures that sometimes straddled the line of inappropriate. But there was no privacy on MySpace, anyone could join the site and they weren’t always who they said they were.

Moving forward to college we found something new – Facebook. You couldn’t have a Facebook page unless you had a college email account – and not every University had Facebook available to its students. Facebook, when it first launched, not only looked very different than it does today, but the purpose for most was a way to stay connected to your high school friends and new college friends.

Slowly, Facebook began to evolve and anyone with an email account could create a Facebook page. The early adopters of Facebook started seeing their parents and aunts and uncles joining Facebook and wanting to be friends with them. Then, potential employers started looking at Facebook to see if those recent college graduates applying for a job seemed like the kind of person that the company wanted representing them. All of a sudden, you saw seniors in college and recent grads changing their Facebook pictures, their content and their status updates. It went from “Party at Joes!” to “Working Hard.” Facebook no longer was just a fun way to post pictures and chat with friends. It evolved into a community with more depth. It became a way for families to keep in touch and also offered businesses, institutions and organizations the opportunities to create personalities to promote their products and services in new ways.

College grads and young professionals then stumbled upon the next social platform that could be value to their careers – LinkedIn. LinkedIn allows professionals to discuss hot topics in their industry, probe other industry professionals for their ideas or advice and is another source for job listings. With LinkedIn you don’t post crazy pictures or status updates, it’s purely a way to put your resume and qualifications out there for the business and professional world to see. LinkedIn also took on a higher professional aura as organizations and those of like interests formed discussion groups (much like the Internet bulletin boards of old, but with considerable more class).

As with any form of communications and connecting, social media users continue to evolve with their favorite platforms over time. Social media and social network sites can prove to be very effective ways to open new doors. You never know – The new lead singer of Journey landed his gig from a video he posted on YouTube of him belting out the band’s classic “Don’t Stop Believing.” There is more focus and thoughtful content today than ever before as we learn to post content that projects the right image and is something you would be comfortable with your 90 year-old grandmother and potential employer seeing.

(Editor’s Note: Lauren is 24 years old, a 2009 graduate of the University of San Diego and has changed her photos and content significantly in the past few years).

]]> http://www.gablepr.com/clientserviceresults/social-media-usage-grows-up-just-like-we-do/feed/ 1 http://www.gablepr.com/clientserviceresults/problem-solving-and-creative-pr-from-the-leopard-hunter/ http://www.gablepr.com/clientserviceresults/problem-solving-and-creative-pr-from-the-leopard-hunter/#comments Fri, 29 Oct 2010 21:23:48 +0000 admin http://www.gablepr.com/?p=2333

Finding Rarities

Posted by Tom Gable

We just returned from an African adventure, including a week in three different isolated camps in Botswana where we armed ourselves with cameras and bounced and careened through rugged terrain in search of game. The morning drives would start at dawn and the afternoon drives hit the road when the weather started cooling around 4:30 (it got to 115 degrees one day). We extended the searching into cooler night drives where we tracked leopards and other carnivores using infrared lights.

What amazed us were the abilities of the guides to find rare animals after seemingly random searching on dirt and sand roads, trails through the bush and even off-roading through scrub brush or twisting back and forth among islands of green amidst barren plains to look for leopards and lions resting in the shade. We got as close as five yards to cheetahs, leopards and lions, including one lazy, impala-filled male who rolled into the shade of our stationary Range Rover to take a nap, unperturbed by the steady clicking of cameras.

During one excursion, we noted more distinctive trees on the horizon than in most drive areas and our guide seemed to be following a pattern. At the end of the day, when relaxing at camp over dinner, I probed into the secrets of this king of the leopard-hunters and found lessons we can all use in problem-solving and generating creative ideas for our clients.

Start with the big picture: thousands of acres of brush, jungle, open plains, swamps, watering holes and islands of green (the client industry). Then, define the goal: finding the one male leopard known to frequent the area (differentiating a disruptive new product).

The guide started with looking for environmental indicators: fresh tracks in the sand along the roads (competitive and trend data). Animals used the roads because it was easier and safer than venturing into the bush, where predators lay in wait. The guide used his own version of a Gable PR exercise we call “The Flip Side”: what’s there, turn it over and what’s not there.

He saw baboon and hyena tracks, which indicated that the leopard wouldn’t be in this area (tough competition). He noted the direction and took an alternate route, going perpendicular to the road, noting new tracks and then took a parallel road to the original (pursuing more data). He found more hyena tracks, so he narrowed the quest further and took a new angle (new market niche; new positioning). As he eliminated bad options, he soon found the breakthrough: fresh leopard tracks and no hyena or baboon tracks (the ah-hah moment in brainstorming).

With the search area narrowed further, he started looking for certain habitats known to be favored by leopards (favorites of the target). He eased the vehicle along the edges of the possible locations and looked for something that might stand out – differentiators such as different shapes and colors, or a leopard tail curving down from a tree branch. Leopards are well camouflaged but their shapes are different than brush and bush. He spotted a lump in the shade next to a green bush with ears sticking up then saw a sudden flash of red color as the leopard yawned. Success!

I liked the process: analysis, logic, narrowing the focus, creative thought, constant refining and patience. Our guides kept circling and trying new routes. The roads and trails – however primitive and rugged – provided some structure so they could proceed within a pattern. The approach offered freedom to explore but not randomly so it could be pursued strategically and repeated.

The same process works for PR professionals. Start with the big picture. Set a goal. Narrow down the search strategically. Eliminate the things that won’t work, for a variety of reasons. And bring in colleagues and strategic partners if needed for new ideas. Think like the leopard-hunter and you might just be rewarded with a rare and magnificent discovery in creative development and problem solving.

Tweetless

Posted by Tom Gable

This headline is actually a take off on a posting by Simon Dumenco on AdAge.com in September titled “RIP, the Press Release (1906-2010) — and Long Live the Tweet. When It Comes to Pithy Spin, Should Marketers Be Taking Their Cues From the Celebrity-Industrial Complex?”

The piece was about as deep and fact-filled as a Tweet (or maybe two Tweets). One excerpt:

“The long-suffering, much-maligned press release, I’d argue, finally died this summer, thanks particularly to JetBlue and BP, with a little moral support from Kanye West and just about every other celebrity with thumbs. (Of course, press releases will probably continue to stumble along, zombie-like, for years to come, because too many PR folks are still heavily invested in grinding them out.)”

The piece did generate lots of attention and comments in several PR discussion groups on PRSA and LinkedIn. I commented on the AdAge site:

“Perhaps use of the news release will fade in the puff-filled world of the ‘celebrity-industrial complex,’ where fast, furious and fluffy seems to rule the day. For legitimate businesses, organizations, institutions and even individuals with a need to get out a quality message with some depth and detail, the news release will continue to be the primary means of communication. This is particularly true with publicly traded companies, where SEC regulations mandate full and timely disclosure. And blasting out a series of 140-character snippets of facts probably won’t qualify.”

Many others pointed out the shortcomings of the piece and also provided links to excellent research supporting the future of the news release. Here are a few examples:

“Serious news requires more than 140 characters. There’s a time and a place for a mixture of the methods we use, some are more appropriate than others — it depends on the client, the story, the event, timing, audience, etc. A true strategist knows how and when to pull it all together.” — Posted by Marisa Vallbona, APR, Fellow PRSA

“Burson Marsteller just published the findings of its message gap research (link). They make a great point – press releases are no longer written just for the media. Given how often they are posted by different sources across the Web, customers and prospects might be reading them as much as reporters. Nuances granted (e.g. press release don’t generate coverage, good media relations skills do), this is another reason the press release isn’t dead.” — Posted by Jon Bornstein

“The news release is far from dead, it just has a new purpose. Granted, it not be an effective media relations tool, but it has become an important online way to talk directly to consumers through search. The wires aggregate the news wires, and news aggregators are the second most popular source of news, according to Pew Internet (click here). – Posted by Eric Schwartzman

“Total hogwash. If you believe it, you haven’t read David Meerman Scott’s whitepaper on press releases and/or his book “New Rules of PR and Marketing” covering the new mind shift of PR/Marketing strategy…tossing out ANY long standing tool without realistically understanding your market, your media, and seriously considering some of the of the NEW and strategic ways of utilization is not a good idea.” — Posted by Melissa Freye

“Total overstatement…This headline was meant to grab attention without the substance to back it up.” – Posted by Toni Hatch

“I made my comments known in the comments section of that preposterous post. Anybody else tired of “FILL IN THE BLANK is Dead” headlines? So bait-and-switchy and gimmicky. Judging from the comments above, you all see through it. Meanwhile, here at Business Wire (Monika is vice president of new media at BW), and our worthy competitors, we are sending 1000s of press release each work day. That ain’t dead, folks. That’s alive and well. If you’re really interested, here’s a link to our White Paper on The State of the Press Release.” – Posted by Monika Maekle

(On the Ad Age comment section, she wrote about the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism finding that “As news is posted faster, often with little enterprise reporting added, the official version of events is becoming more important. We found official press releases often appear word for word in first accounts of events, though often not noted as such.”)

The AdAge piece did get lots of attention. There are precedents for hyperbolic claims erupting when tectonic shifts are underway in the media, such as the punditry about the anticipated death of radio with the launch of television or the deaths of traditional print and broadcast advertising when the Internet started taking off after the introduction of the Netscape browser in 1994. The deaths didn’t happen and won’t because of the same reasons the world won’t see the death of the press release any time soon: people get their information from many sources, so communicators need to make strategic use of all the channels, tools and tactics to reach those targets effectively and measure impact.

The press release may see different forms of delivery and packaging, but it will continue to be a potentially powerful communications tool for organizations of all sizes, particularly when the work is fact-filled, content-rich and tells a good story.

And for a few last words about advertising, which AdAge claims started in the U.S. in 1704:

“From any cross section of ads, the general advertiser’s attitude would seem to be: If you are a lousy, smelly, idle, underprivileged and over-sexed status-seeking neurotic moron, give me your money.” — Kenneth Bromfield

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it. — Stephen Leacock

Maybe Not

Posted by Tom Gable

Will print media make a comeback starting in 2011 or will newspapers be gone by 2022?

Two recent postings questioned the future of newspapers and print media. Joe Pulizzi, writing in Folio, noted that print can and should play a vital role in an overall content marketing mix. He offered seven reasons why he envisioned good news for print in the coming year (summarized here; see his post for more detail):

1. Getting Attention: There are fewer publications in most niches, so each gets more attention.

2. Print Media Help with Customer Retention

3. No Audience Development Costs; marketers can distribute a magazine to their customers using existing lists.

4. What’s Old Is New Again; marketers are leveraging print in their marketing mix.

5. Customers Still Need to Ask Questions. He noted that you can ask yourself tough questions based on what you read.

6. Print Still Excites People: He talked to a journalist who said it’s harder to get people to agree to an interview for an online story than print; people will reschedule for that.

7. Unplug: Joe opined that people are disconnecting themselves from digital media in increasing numbers. (Recent studies show that digital overload actually hurts cognition).

I agree wholeheartedly on No. 6 on the excitement of print, plus its credibility. Coverage in a real, non-electronic publication with a history of competence and integrity has significantly more value than coverage in most online media and blogs (the latter being, of course, fairly low on the credibility scale). Seeing your story in the print edition of the NYT, WSJ, Economist or even your home town daily paper generates a great sense of accomplishment. PR professionals almost expect coverage to land in on-line media, so the so-called earned media isn’t as dear online as in print. Of course the print media have a website, RSS feed, Twitter feed, etc., so you can have the best of both worlds. And it’s a world I surely want to continue in perpetuity.

On the other side of the debate, Ross Dawson, a futurist, was speaking to Newspaper Publishers’ Association in Australia and predicted that within 10 years, mobile reading devices would allow people to consume news on the run and be the “primary news interface”.

He predicted the costs would fall from the $600 iPad level to under $10. “More sophisticated news readers will be foldable, or rollable, gesture-controlled and fully interactive,” he said.

He predicted journalism would be “increasingly crowdsourced” to “hordes of amateurs overseen by professionals.” (We now have that on the web, mostly with no adult supervision)

He did predict expert journalists would still be employed in Australia. Audiences would be guided to trusted journalists by some form of public reputation measures (probably recorded from electronics sensors implanted in our skins and transmitted wirelessly to the Media Measurement Algorithm Monitor in the sky).

Bottom line: this former printer journalist and long-time PR practitioner believes the printed word will continue to be valued by many, most notably those with a sense of the weight of non-electronic media. I read four papers every morning with breakfast and love to see how the news is played, the relationships of stories, news judgment in context and find new discoveries on every page. Sure, you can get a little serendipity online, but I don’t think the medium works that way. I find the printed variety better for scanning and quickly absorbing the flow of news and trends. I can turn a page and scan it faster for information than I can scrolling through a website screen or agonizing as I view 14 lines of news at a time on my Blackberry.

Joe, thanks for the post. I second the motion: print is rebounding — in 2011 and beyond.

Channeling the CEO

Posted by Tom Gable

Your favorite CEO wants to get social and start blogging, but: a) doesn’t want to commit much time; b) isn’t sure why but his peers are doing it; c) isn’t clear on what he wants to say; and, d) wants you or your firm to be ghost blogger.

How to approach this challenge strategically and diplomatically? Here are six steps to get started.

Six Steps to Ghost Blogging Glory

1. Brainstorm with the CEO on what he or she hopes to accomplish (boost image, gain guru status, position the organization versus the competition, promote an industry cause, support company marketing, connect with investors, counter negative blogs, etc.)
2. What is the CEO’s voice, the personality? How much to show or not show?
3. Can the blog be differentiated to support organizational image and reputation
4. What about frequency? Will there be a steady flow of facts, insights and other content to support a daily, weekly or biweekly blog? Or will it be tied to events, breaking news, industry trends and commentary? Or all of the above?
5. How to measure success?
6. And the final tough question (or maybe the first): so what and who cares?

Venture forth if it appears anyone beyond family and friends might care, if the work will add value to the conversations and if the collective impressions will contribute to building the image of the organization. If not, cease and desist and recommend other approaches (authoring white papers, speaking at conferences, etc.).

For process, ghost blogging can work if you have a plan and adopt protocols and procedures.

For example, to speed development of copy and ensure you keep to your desired frequency, have the busy CEO provide his idea on the perfect headline, directions on copy, bullet points, links or other guidance on what he or she wants to talk about, the target audiences, the important points to be made and impressions to leave. This brain dump can be done via email, voice mail, and one-on-one or group brainstorming sessions with others involved in reaching out to your different audiences.

With directions in hand on topics, the ghost blogger can then draft copy for CEO approval and post only after approved. Should the post generate comments, the ghost blogger shouldn’t assume the persona of the CEO and reply directly. The ghost blogger needs to get the CEO involved in responding as fast as possible within the guidelines established earlier for tone, personality, theme and overall positioning. Then, even ghost blogging can fit neatly into your overall investment in image and reputation as a part of corporate strategy, with consistency across all channels.

(??? Tom, did you approve this? Let me know as soon as possible. Thanks! – KR)

The Right Turn?

Posted by Tom Gable

When unexpected events or outside forces suddenly impact your operation, rapid, reasoned response is essential to protecting the brand and organizational image for the long term. You gather facts, analyze the impacts on all constituents and then determine your strategic management and crisis communications plans going forward. But options exist. You have reached a critical fork in the road to the path toward continued trust and credibility or possibly something less. How do you decide which road to take?

At Gable PR, we’ve used a quick litmus test over the years in handling a variety of crises (hostile take overs, threats to public safety, food-borne illnesses, religious scandals, etc.) – three questions to focus on the essentials:

1. Is the strategic plan true to the brand or organizational values and what you stand for?

2. Will it solidify your reputation for the long term, despite short-term issues?

If the answer is no, maybe not, or hedged in any way, ask:

3. How will this be played in the media and by your competitors?

The recent Apple “antennagate” and BP oil spill crisis provide good case histories where the organizations may have let ego, arrogance and perceived invincibility get in the way of critical thinking about strategy. An NBC San Diego reporter got to the point when he asked me in an interview about crisis as a metaphor for company values.

“How you operate in a crisis is probably a better indicator of the quality of a corporation than (how you operate) during good times,” I replied.

A wide range of business, technical and PR media noted that Steve Jobs puts a crack in the rarely sullied brand image of Apple when he admitted that in the smart phone world, “phones aren’t perfect.” And that consumers were guilty of the lost signals because, well, we held the phone to make a call.

Jobs said the issue was all so “blown so out of proportion,” then proceeded to add his own momentum to the blow out.

He dragged Motorola, Samsung and Droid into the fray by showing they too could have problems. Using the famous Kindergarten Defense, Jobs basically said that since everyone else is doing it, what’s the big deal?

Motorola had a great time with it, running ads that promoted a phone with “no jacket required.” As quoted from a recent Fortune brainstorming panel, Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha was asked how he felt about Apple posting video showing its own “death grip” testing of Motorola’s new Droid X Smartphone, and if he thought it was a fair business practice. Jha answered: “You know, I heard (probably apocryphal) that the most popular voice message on iPhone4 was, ‘Sorry I can’t answer your call, because I am holding my phone!’ I don’t think this is an issue with Droid X,” reported Fortune writer Seth Weintraub.

The Motorola ad noted: “At Motorola, we believe a customer shouldn’t have to dress up their phone for it to work properly.”

The press conference videos disappeared from Apple’s site shortly after the Hitler meme and other parodies blanketed the Internet. A College Humor video (NSFW) offered one of the cruder send ups of the Apple iPhone press conference and Steve Jobs attitude.

The Register (UK) nailed it:

“…Apple thrives by saying that its products are simply better than everyone else’s, and anyone who can’t see that is clearly not cool enough. Running down the competition is very uncool, and it’s not the Apple way of doing things.”

Lesson learned: which fork did he take? Did ego override sound crisis PR strategy? A review of comments by assorted experts found general agreement that Apple should have simply owned up to the problem and offered the bumper fix immediately via a press release rather than an odd video press conference, with follow up interviews. The approach would have protected the integrity of the brand and reduced risk to the CEO, with no follow up parodies and “antennagate ads.”

In contract, the concept of owning up and moving on was demonstrated clearly by Google when it announced it was discontinuing Wave. It offered a straightforward assessment and showed the integrity of a company and a culture dedicated to taking changes and not being afraid to fail. For an attitude toward failure, my favorite quote is from Thomas Edison, who said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Next: similar and obvious lessons from BP.