Last week was an exciting one here at Gregory FCA. We deployed teams of professionals to media events throughout the country to handle a number of client programs. Friday's end-of-week debrief meeting was pretty intense with everyone sharing what worked and what didn't out in the field.
As teams presented, I realized that the more things change in public relations, the more things stay the same and some fundamentals always hold true. Certainly in the context of live events, social media tools and tactics can easily be leveraged with traditional strategies to amplify the PR effort. And at all our events, our teams were tweeting and posting photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube. But still, a few immutable fundamentals of PR held true, they being:
Media watching TV on Mitsubishi's new 3-D sets
1. Media events still work. In New York, we pulled off a major coup for our client, Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, by managing their media day (actually two days) to showcase their new line-up of 2010 TVs. Even in this day of social media, when some PR practitioners contend that face-to-face is dead, the turnout was unbelievable. Some 60 media people stopped in to learn more about what's new in TVs. They attended because no matter how mediated communications has become, nothing replaces face time with the media to fully explain a product, technology, direction, or opinion.
2. Satellite media tours are effective for consumer products. We completed one last week for a client that produces a dental sterilization product, and used Hershey Park as the backdrop. The theme, summer travel tips for moms, was ideally timed to summer travel. And the resulting media coverage on TV and radio amounted to placements in well over 100 outlets nationwide, when you factor in the number of syndicated media points that took the feed.
3. Relationships still matter. There was a time when public relations was conducted over lunch between a reporter and a PR person. No one has time for lunch anymore. Yet relationships still matter. By leveraging our combined relationships drawn from everyone in the firm, we vastly increased our footprint. For instance, one senior AE leveraged a five-year-old relationship to entice "Entertainment Tonight" to attend a media event. Treat the media right over the years, and they will reciprocate.
4. Research and product knowledge are keys to telling bright-line stories. For every story, we squeezed as much fact as possible out of the topic to win coverage. For instance, for our New York event, our account team learned everything possible about 3-D TV in order to explain the technology to reporters from media as diverse as Broadcast Engineering to Rolling Stone magazine. By being able to talk the talk, the media realized that this was a can't-miss event that demanded their attendance.
5. Follow-up is key. One e-mail is not a PR campaign. A news release is often akin to a tree falling in the forest. What works best is constant follow-up to ensure that the news was received, that the event was explained, that attendance is required, and that subsequent stories appear.
So even as the sands of public relations shift under our feet, the fundamentals of our business remain the same. A week-long series of media events proved that point, and won media coverage around the country, all secured the old fashioned way -- earned.
With today's post, we're going to take a break from our usual reporting on PR to share with you a note we received from Ann Marie Gordon, a junior member of the firm, who is also a communications specialist and reservist in the U.S. Coast Guard. Ann Marie is participating in the Coast Guard's response to the Gulf oil spill. Here are her thoughts from ground zero.
Hi everyone!
Thank you so much for the box of Hope's cookies! I got word that I received a package and when I went to go pick it up, there were a bunch of Coasties waiting for me to open it because they saw cookies on the box. They are delicious, as always, and still soft and fresh! I really appreciate the thought, I never realized how comforting it can be to get a package from home.
I still can't believe I'm part of this response. I feel like it's turning into a political mess. One problem just turns into another one. I have been doing public affairs for two parishes (Louisiana is divided into parishes, not counties). They are only 10 minutes apart but they are dealing with completely separate issues. I'm right on the Gulf of Mexico and both places were hit with oil. Grand Isle was hit the hardest. I think it really hit me what was going on when I walked to the state park to watch the sunset over the gulf and I could smell the oil and I saw a dolphin swimming in the sheen that was washing in with the tide.
In Port Fourchon they are dealing with the moratorium the President placed on offshore drilling. If I wasn't here, I wouldn't really understand the effects this moratorium is having on the economy. I'm pretty confident in saying just about every person on this island has a tie to the oil business. Now with this ban, so many people are being put out of work. This just adds to the fisherman and restaurant business that is being affected by this oil spill. The gulf fuels about 18% of America and somewhere around 90% of the oil from offshore drilling is unloaded in Port Fourchon.
As a member of the Coast Guard, I can't get involved with the moratorium, that is just something the local government is dealing with. But when I walk around the community in my uniform, locals flock to me and I can just hear the hurt in their voices.
My primary responsibility down here is getting a Coast Guard presence in the media. I have secured interviews with USA Today, NYT, CNN, AP, CBS News, ABC News, FOX News, PBS, BBC, local New Orleans and Baton Rouge affiliates and foreign media.
I am here to document too. I am working on my first feature story today since the weather has shut down operations for the morning. But I have been taking a lot of pictures. The pictures I release, and any photos released by the Coast Guard or any military branch, are the public's domain. My photos made the covers of some smaller papers, my biggest has been the cover, above the fold, of The Washington Post and CNN and AP slide shows. And I have one picture running with BP ads on commercials and newspapers. I'm not really sure how I feel about that.
I'm starting to shift gears with coverage. I'm realizing now that national news has agendas. In a situation like this, I feel like it's most important to position to those most affected, the people of Louisiana. I have been reaching out to the local affiliates more to invite them to the staging areas to show all the good things the Coast Guard and the local communities are doing. The oil is still leaking, and the relief wells are projected to be completed in August, so I think it's important to show the people of Louisiana the continuous efforts to clean this up.
I was sent to the staging areas -- the areas hit with the oil -- and I hit the ground running. My hard work has paid off though because I am the only PA (CG public affairs specialist) that has not been pulled out of a staging area. I still have supervision and I am learning a lot but I am also teaching. The CG focuses a lot on the documenting aspect of the job and I help people at my rank realize the importance to reaching out to the media and getting the story out. I got so much out of this experience I can't express it in an email.
You can check out some of the photos I released here, and just search my name in the top left box.
Again, thank you so much for the cookies, it really means a lot coming from the company I work for. When I tell people I am a reservist the the first thing they ask is how is my full-time job taking this. I tell them I have full support and a great supervisor that really welcomes the experience I am getting from this response.
I hope everyone is doing well and I am looking forward to coming back soon!
This analysis is based on the presumption that most written work, especially that done by the media, is written at a sixth-grade level. It’s an urban legend that I have also been guilty of repeating, at times suggesting that a news release or executive speech needs to be simplified “to a sixth-grade level.”
But the entire notion of grade level communications is a red herring that fails because it breaks down language into discrete parts and then analyzes it by length of sentence and number of letters in a word. So the shorter the sentence and smaller the word, the lower the grade level and the easier it is to understand. Or at least the theory goes.
The entire notion is flawed. If you performed the same analysis on the music of The Beatles, you would come to a similar conclusion. After all, Paul, John, Ringo, and George used only four chords -- the same chords that any beginner learns in early lessons. Their lyrics? No greater words than you would expect from four boys from Liverpool.
The reality is that like The Beatles, great PR writing doesn't need to rely on an endless palette of multi-syllabic words. Rather, it's the specificity of the words chosen and how they are arranged that give us our power as communicators.
The best lessons of all were shared with me by my book and magazine editors when I was a freelance writer early in my career. Their advice was to get out of the way. Become invisible to the reader. They urged me to take command of readers’ thoughts by not tipping them off that I was controlling and manipulating their consciousness. That meant subordinating my own early tendencies to want to sound smart to the higher calling of imparting the most possible information in the tightest, quickest manner.
This week I met with our firm’s incoming class of interns, 10 young people pulled from the best colleges in America. I asked them, “How much would you pay if I could give you a ray gun that could control other people’s thoughts?” They all laughed and told me it was impossible.
I corrected them, and explained that when you write well, you are taking control of the reader’s thoughts. In essence, a well-written news story, blog post, or news release takes over another person’s consciousness, hijacks their awareness in favor of the ideas, concepts, and thoughts you prefer them to consider at a given time. Pretty powerful stuff. And certainly not the stuff of sixth-grade English class.
Contrary to Paul J.J. Payack’s research, the value of good writing cannot be calculated by simple word and letter counts. Here’s the real way a skilled writer controls the thoughts of a reader:
1. Disguises bias. Great PR writing is opaque in that you can’t see through to the writer’s agenda, opinions, or biases. It reads objectively and news-like in its presentation, when in reality, it quickly instills in the reader’s mind the importance of the facts, news, or story.
2. Appears in a style close to how a journalist might write it. Consider the typical news release with the obligatory corporate descriptors and disclaimers. Would it ever appear in the media in a similar format or style? Never. Whoever wrote the rule that news releases have to start with the company or product name, followed immediately by a tagline or description of the product or company, was a bad writer. Find him. Shoot him. Such notions have failed us in PR, who always champion the easy conveyance of a client’s sentiment or worldview.
3. Succeeds despite optimization. We now have a new restraint of good writing. The need to optimize news releases and blog posts for almighty Google. It’s a necessary evil. But it shouldn’t disrupt the normal flow of language.
4. Uses verbs and facts. Not adjectives. An editor of mine used to demand four facts in every sentence and a fine pruning of all adjectives. He demanded that writing be salted with power verbs (not unlike the word salted). Verbs, not adjectives, propel language. Two sentences can often be reduced to one by combining the facts of each into a single thought.
5. Plays well lyrically. Writing is lyrical. Bad writing is horsey, clunky, and plays poorly to the ear. Good writing is effortless, seemingly dispensable in the moment while lasting a lifetime in intention and meaning. It hits the right notes, clearly articulating all messages.
6. Speaks to the reader. The #1 rule of writing has always been, and will always be, know your audience. Perhaps more than any other principle, this one strikes at the heart of the grade level writing test. A good PR writer knows when to assume the voice of the CEO and speak to an audience of investors or regulators in exacting terms. But that same writer needs to understand when to assume a chatty, more personal style to score meaning with customers and employees. It might not be The Beatles, but it’s certainly not for a sixth-grader.
So I would hasten CNN not to give gurus like Paul Payack and his company, Global Language Monitor, much credence. Speeches don’t succeed or fail because they were written on a 10th-grade level. They rise or fall by the six points laid bare in this post.
This Tuesday, we brought together a number of clients to share an evening of discussion about the issues their companies are facing with regard to social media. It was an interesting mix of people and businesses. Different industries, different problems, and a singular goal to learn from one another.
Some common themes emerged. What surprised me is that these themes are the same ones we have heard since we started taking social media seriously in 2004. While internally at our firm we feel we have come a long way in understanding the practice and implementation of social media for B2C and B2B communications, the fact is that most businesses can still be considered early adopters, even pioneers -- despite the noise level and cheerleading around social media for PR, marketing, and branding.
Here are the five themes that were common to most, if not all of our friends around the table Tuesday night.
Theme #1: Management is concerned that we can't control social media. We want control of our messages.
The Resolution: If you can't control your social media communications, then you must not be controlling any of your other communications. Your people are talking to your customers, suppliers, and partners on the phone and in e-mail. They are already representing your company. They are already the public face of the company. And they are probably already using social media to communicate, regardless of your internal policies.
Social media is nothing more than another way, a new way, for your people to communicate. Companies need to train employees on how to use it, just as companies train employees on how to present in person, on the phone, and in e-mail. This is a policy and training problem, not a technology or control problem.
Theme #2: Social media puts us at risk. The legal department will not approve our use of it. It creates a digital trail that could get us in legal trouble.
The Resolution: Social media communications are no different than e-mail or the telephone. Anyone could take any e-mail from your staff and post it on a blog, Facebook page, or Twitter feed (and they do). They could record a phone call and post it as a podcast (and they have). And I don't have to tell you that the first thing the lawyers subpoena in any case is the corporate e-mail database.
So finally this weekend, we received some good news from the Gulf Coast. BP's containment dome appears to be capturing significant amounts of the oil spill, and BP CEO Tony Hayward told the BBC he expects this latest development could lead to the vast majority of the leak being captured at, or near, the well head.
Even with this news, BP is left in a disastrous PR position, forever tattooed as the perpetrator of the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Can they ever rebound? Exxon did from the Valdez oil spill, even though a recent forensic study revealed open pools of oil still scar the shoals of Prudhoe Bay, 20 years after the catastrophe.
With more than $6 billion in first quarter earnings, BP certainly has the financial wherewithal to weather the storm. But the company has to change its approach to the public, and take real and lasting steps to systemically transform itself into a company that understands the public trust it holds in its hands every time it undertakes the risky endeavor to sink a well. Here's what I would be telling BP:
1. Put up or shut up.Now that progress is being made to capture the leaking oil, it's time for BP to put up a $1 billion remediation fund for the people of Gulf Coast. Use the money to ramp up restoration. Pay off claims. Bail out busted businesses. And clean the shores and wetlands. It's a monumental challenge that takes money. BP has the money and needs to spend it now to reclaim any hope of salvaging its global reputation. It's also in the best interest of BP shareholders. Without strong and quick action, the company faces tremendous risk that can be mitigated through sincere and immediate action.
2. Put up another $200 million to fund oil industry remediation research, centered at Louisiana State University. Since Edwin Drake, the oil industry's technological breakthroughs have focused on getting oil out of the ground. Horizontal drilling. CO2 injection. Tethered platforms. Deep water drilling needs technology to keep oil in the ground or from ever hitting the ground, beaches, and oceans. The unintended consequence of Prudhoe Bay is that the world actually believes steam and paper towels can clean up an oil spill. (They can't and they don't.) Oil industry technology has to go beyond simply drilling deeper and cleaning up the mess after the fact. The industry needs to develop new technologies to contend with the risk of today's deep water drilling, whether here, in the North Sea, or off Norway.
3. Get Tony Hayward off American TV. A recent study conducted by Gregory FCA shows that Hayward's reputation has cratered since BP started airing TV commercials with him serving as spokesperson. The American ideal of a leader isn't someone who looks like Liz Lemon's fall-back love on "30 Rock," Welsey Snipes. (No, not that Wesley Snipes.)
Separated at birth: Tony Hayward ...
Wesley Snipes (not that Wesley Snipes)
Rather, we need to see and hear from a fellow American who has a vested interest in our country, not the whiny Hayward, who recently lamented that he can't wait for the crisis to be over so he can get his life back.
In an interesting article in last week's Time magazine, writer Lev Grossman gives readers an inside look at how recommendation software is used by online giants such as Pandora, Netflix, and Match.com to suggest relevant topics and products.
It's a good read, and full of little-considered issues as to how this software is created and what factors go into associating one song, movie, or lover with another. Once the purview of critics and reviewers, our tastes have been commandeered by software that constantly makes associations for us.
So if you listen to Pandora, your exposure to music is being controlled by an algorithm developed according to specific characteristics shared by the songs that Pandora is serving up at any given moment.
I started to shy away from the music recommendation software of iTunes and Amazon, and stopped listening to Pandora after realizing just how limiting my own taste in music had become. A year-long fetish for Death Cab for Cutie led me down an increasingly long, melancholy diet of Radiohead, Coldplay, and My Morning Jacket that ended when my personal trainer banished "slit-your-wrist" music during workouts.
As software becomes more important to consumer choice, we run the risk of narrowing our own field of vision, making it increasingly difficult for new products and services to break through our own air defenses. While convenient, recommendation software keeps us in a safety zone of music, products, and people who we already have some familiarity with.
It relegates us to our own tribe, and doesn't allow for that rare find of something new, outside the tried-and-true that might excite, educate, or expose us to a new thought, a new belief, or at least some new music that doesn't drown itself in self-sorrow (at least the way it did for me).
And perhaps that's good news for public relations practitioners. In a world of the expected, we have the skills and know-how to introduce audiences to the unexpected. Granted, it's not without bias. But it does run against the grain of mass recommendations made by the automated brain of the common wisdom. By playing against trends and bringing new ideas forward, we have the ability to break the lockstep that comes from recommendations based on past experience.
In the old days, that would be called news -- something other than convention. And news was -- and still is -- the very lifeblood of public relations. By countering trends, inverting the expected, we PR folks, perhaps better than any other player in the information markets, can help overcome the homogenization of taste and bring forth that which is outside what we have purchased, viewed, listened to, and dated in the past.
After reading the Time article, I am left wondering whether The Beatles, The Clash, Nirvana, and other game-changing bands would have been discovered by the masses and if they would have accounted for such great shifts in pop culture. None were based on the past.
All shattered expectation, rather than played to it, which is an important basic tenant of public relations and one that might explain why Lady Gaga is such a simple incarnate of Grace Jones and Madonna, and why, if recommendation software had existed in 1961, we still might be listening to Pat Boone.
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